Real-Time Monitoring of Under-Five Mortality

In most low-income countries, Ministries of Health and their partners must rely on periodic household surveys as their primary population-level source of vital statistics. Recent initiatives around the Millennium Development Goals have directed the attention of the scientific, policy, and practice communities towards the limited progress over the last 60 years in improving vital statistics systems in low-income countries, leading to increased demands by public health officials for the measurement of short-term changes in under-five mortality. Few studies have examined the accuracy of real-time mortality measurement in low resource settings, and the potential for such approaches to be strengthened and scaled up. This new PLOS Collection brings together the results of a five-year program of research focused on improving the measurement of short-term changes in neonatal and child mortality in low-resource settings.

Image Credit: RMM