PLoS medicine
-
Andrew Gibbs and colleagues discuss the African Women's Protocol, a framework for ensuring reproductive rights are supported throughout the continent and for supporting interventions to improve women's reproductive health, including the MDGs.
-
Diarrhea remains a leading cause of mortality among young children in low- and middle-income countries. Although the evidence for individual diarrhea prevention and treatment interventions is solid, the effect a comprehensive scale-up effort would have on diarrhea mortality has not been estimated. ⋯ Using currently available interventions, we demonstrate that with improved coverage, diarrheal deaths can be drastically reduced. If delivery strategy bottlenecks can be overcome and the international community can collectively deliver on the key strategies outlined in these scenarios, we will be one step closer to achieving success for the United Nations' Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG4) by 2015.
-
Economic growth is widely perceived as a major policy instrument in reducing childhood undernutrition in India. We assessed the association between changes in state per capita income and the risk of undernutrition among children in India. ⋯ We failed to find consistent evidence that economic growth leads to reduction in childhood undernutrition in India. Direct investments in appropriate health interventions may be necessary to reduce childhood undernutrition in India. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.