Current dichotomous metrics obscure trends in severe and extreme child growth failure.

Historically, the prevalence of child growth failure (CGF) has been tracked dichotomously as the proportion of children more than 2 SDs below the median of the World Health Organization growth standards. However, this conventional "thresholding" approach fails to recognize child growth as a spectrum and obscures trends in populations with the highest rates of CGF. Our analysis presents the first ever estimates of entire distributions of HAZ, WHZ, and WAZ for each of 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2020 for children less than 5 years old by age group and sex.

Group B streptococcus infection during pregnancy and infancy: estimates of regional and global burden.

Background: Group B streptococcus (GBS) colonisation during pregnancy can lead to invasive GBS disease (iGBS) in infants, including meningitis or sepsis, with a high mortality risk. Other outcomes include stillbirths, maternal infections, and prematurity. There are data gaps, notably regarding neurodevelopmental impairment (NDI), especially after iGBS sepsis, which have limited previous global estimates.

Publisher Correction: Mapping exclusive breastfeeding in Africa between 2000 and 2017.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Mapping exclusive breastfeeding in Africa between 2000 and 2017.

Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF)-giving infants only breast-milk (and medications, oral rehydration salts and vitamins as needed) with no additional food or drink for their first six months of life-is one of the most effective strategies for preventing child mortality. Despite these advantages, only 37% of infants under 6 months of age in Africa were exclusively breastfed in 2017, and the practice of EBF varies by population. Here, we present a fine-scale geospatial analysis of EBF prevalence and trends in 49 African countries from 2000-2017, providing policy-relevant administrative- and national-level estimates.