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Abstract
This is the second of five papers in the child survival series. The first focused
on continuing high rates of child mortality (over 10 million each year) from preventable
causes: diarrhoea, pneumonia, measles, malaria, HIV/AIDS, the underlying cause of
undernutrition, and a small group of causes leading to neonatal deaths. We review
child survival interventions feasible for delivery at high coverage in low-income
settings, and classify these as level 1 (sufficient evidence of effect), level 2 (limited
evidence), or level 3 (inadequate evidence). Our results show that at least one level-1
intervention is available for preventing or treating each main cause of death among
children younger than 5 years, apart from birth asphyxia, for which a level-2 intervention
is available. There is also limited evidence for several other interventions. However,
global coverage for most interventions is below 50%. If level 1 or 2 interventions
were universally available, 63% of child deaths could be prevented. These findings
show that the interventions needed to achieve the millennium development goal of reducing
child mortality by two-thirds by 2015 are available, but that they are not being delivered
to the mothers and children who need them.