Positive Health Online

Abstract

PALMER and COLLEAGUES, (1)Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. (2)UNICEF, New York, USA document the evolution of Child Health Days (CHDs), designed as regular events for the delivery of health and nutrition services to children under the age of five.

Background

In efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goal for mortality among children under 5 years of age, countries require strategies for covering hard-to-reach and older children who are often missed by routine, fixed-site health services.

Methodology

The authors sought to document the evolution of Child Health Days (CHDs), designed as regular events for the delivery of health and nutrition services to children under the age of five. The researchers extracted information on service delivery strategies and codelivered interventions for the period 1999 to 2010from global monitoring databases for vitamin A and immunization.

Results

The data illustrate a dramatic rise in CHDs over the decade: only two countries held CHDs in 1999; in 2010, 96 CHDs were conducted in 51 countries. Reliance on CHDs has been particularly marked in sub-Saharan Africa, where they are increasingly used to deliver five or more services per event. Whereas early CHDs were largely defined by co-delivery of vitamin A, immunizations, and deworming, they have since evolved into diverse packages including services such as water purification tablets and screening for severe malnutrition.

Conclusion

The scale-up of CHDs is helping countries to achieve high and equitable coverage of essential health and nutrition services. Future research should consider whether the increasingly diverse services delivered via CHDs are guided by epidemiologic considerations, and whether the rising number of co-delivered interventions is affecting coverage performance or service quality. Guidance is also needed to ensure that CHDs are implemented as part of systematic efforts to improve health systems.

References

Palmer AC(1), Diaz T(2), Noordam AC(2), Dalmiya N(2). Evolution of the child health day strategy for the integrated delivery of child health and nutrition services. Food Nutr Bull. 34(4):412-9. Dec 2013.