Monitoring child mortality through community health worker reporting of births and deaths in Malawi: validation against a household mortality survey.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The rate of decline in child mortality is too slow in most African countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. Effective strategies to monitor child mortality are needed where accurate vital registration data are lacking to help governments assess and report on progress in child survival. We present results from a test of a mortality monitoring approach based on recording of births and deaths by specially trained community health workers (CHWs) in Malawi.

Methods and findings

Government-employed community health workers in Malawi are responsible for maintaining a Village Health Register, in which they record births and deaths that occur in their catchment area. We expanded on this syste

SUBMITTER: Amouzou A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3928330 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature