Author Description

There have been significant improvements in the health of the world's children over the past fifty years, but some challenges have remained constant. One of the more discouraging aspects of work over the decades to improve child health is the persistence with which some of the more significant causes of child death have exerted their baleful influence. In the year 2003, the leading causes of death among children under five, outside of the neonatal period, were: pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, measles and AIDS.5 In the 1950s, of course, AIDS would not have appeared on such a list, and polio would likely have had a notable place, but otherwise, many of the same diseases that threatened children fifty years ago continue to kill and undermine the health of children today.