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Medicine & Health

Global Child Health: From Birth to Adolescence and Beyond

Special Issues

In 2000, the UN adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were intended to address key determinants of human health and welfare, including poverty, hunger, and disease. One of the MDGs included the specific aim to reduce child mortality globally. However, now that the original 2015 target date has passed, concerns have been raised that not all of the MDGs, including targets on child health and welfare, have ultimately been met.

The WHO reports that, in 2018, still over 6 million children and adolescents died globally, of which over 5 million died before the age of 5. The majority of these deaths are preventable. In children under 5, the leading causes of death include pneumonia, diarrhoea, neonatal sepsis, and malaria. In adolescents 10–19 years, road injuries, self-harm, HIV, and interpersonal or collective violence are predominant causes of death, and their contributions to mortality differ for girls and boys.

This PLOS Medicine Special Issue brings together the latest research on child and adolescent health, and features topics including strategies to monitor and combat child mortality from birth through adolescence, marginalised populations of children and adolescents, environmental impacts on child health and mortality and adolescent and school-age health and welfare.

Image Credit: World Map WatercolorMichael Tompsett, CC BY 2.0

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