You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 9, Issue 5
  • Patterns of amenable child mortality over time in 34 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): evidence from a 15-year time trend analysis (2001–2015)

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Public health
Research
Patterns of amenable child mortality over time in 34 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): evidence from a 15-year time trend analysis (2001–2015)
  1. Maria Michela Gianino1,
  2. Jacopo Lenzi2,
  3. Marco Bonaudo1,
  4. Maria Pia Fantini2,
  5. Roberta Siliquini1,
  6. Walter Ricciardi3,4,
  7. Gianfranco Damiani3,4
  1. 1 Department of Public Health Sciences and Pediatrics, Università degli Studi di Torino, Torino, Italy
  2. 2 Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
  3. 3 Istituto di Sanità Pubblica, Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Sede di Roma, Roma, Lazio, Italy
  4. 4 Fondazione Policlinico Universitario ‘Agostino Gemelli’ IRCCS, Roma, Italy
  1. Correspondence to Dr Marco Bonaudo; marco.bonaudo{at}unito.it

Abstract

Objectives To analyse the trends of amenable mortality rates (AMRs) in children over the period 2001–2015.

Design Time trend analysis.

Setting Thirty-four member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Participants Midyear estimates of the resident population aged ≤14 years.

Primary and secondary outcome measures Using data from the WHO Mortality Database and Nolte and McKee’s list, AMRs were calculated as the annual number of deaths over the population/100 000 inhabitants. The rates were stratified by age groups (<1, 1–4, 5–9 and 10–14 years). All data were summarised by presenting the average rates for the years 2001/2005, 2006/2010 and 2011/2015.

Results There was a significant decline in children’s AMRs in the <1 year group in all 34 OECD countries from 2001/2005 to 2006/2010 (332.78 to 295.17/100 000; %Δ −11.30%; 95% CI −18.75% to −3.85%) and from 2006/2010 to 2011/2015 (295.17 to 240.22/100 000; %Δ −18.62%; 95% CI −26.53% to −10.70%) and a slow decline in the other age classes. The only cause of death that was significantly reduced was conditions originating in the early neonatal period for the <1 year group. The age-specific distribution of causes of death did not vary significantly over the study period.

Conclusions The low decline in amenable mortality rates for children aged ≥1 year, the large variation in amenable mortality rates across countries and the insufficient success in reducing mortality from all causes suggest that the heath system should increase its efforts to enhance child survival. Promoting models of comanagement between primary care and subspecialty services, encouraging high-quality healthcare and knowledge, financing universal access to healthcare and adopting best practice guidelines might help reduce amenable child mortality.

  • international health services
  • amenable mortality
  • child
  • childhooh
  • healthcare
  • oecd countries

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-027909

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors MMG and GD formulated the research goals and supervised the research activity; MMG, GD and JL defined the design of the methodology; MMG wrote the article; RS, WR and MPF revised the article; MB collected the data and managed the database; JL used statistical techniques to analyse the study data. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.