London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The funding, which comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Emory University, is to prepare a new surveillance site in Harar, Ethiopia. It is one of three new sites being established as part of the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) Network.

Over the last 15 years, the world has made good progress towards reducing child mortality - from 12 million deaths of children under five in 1990 to just under six million today. However, according to the United Nations, mortality figures remain disproportionately high in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa; these two regions accounted for more than 80% of global under-five deaths last year.

This challenge is complicated by the fact that, in many low-resource countries the cause of death in children under the age of five is never truly determined due to lack of health surveillance, registration systems, research and data.

In order to help close these gaps, the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Network has also established new sites in Kisumu, Kenya; and Baliakandi, Bangladesh. These sites - which join existing sites in South Africa, Mali and Mozambique - will work with communities and local organisations, employing innovative diagnostic, laboratory and surveillance methods to ascertain why young children are dying.

Researchers working at the CHAMPS sites will collect, analyse and interpret data that help determine causes of death for children under five years old. These findings will be shared with families, communities, healthcare providers, and local and national public health institutes to help inform policies and actions to reduce child mortality. One unique feature of CHAMPS is commitment to rapid, open access to data for clinicians, health practitioners, scientists and researchers around the world.

Dr Anna Seale, Clinical Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who is one of the researchers at the CHAMPS site in Harar, Ethiopia, said: "CHAMPS will bring new understanding of the causes of child death in Ethiopia, a country with 1.4% of the world's population.

"In the highest-burden settings, we know the least about the causes of child death. The evidence generated by CHAMPS will drive public health interventions where they are needed most, and to the most vulnerable, newborns and stillbirths."

The CHAMPS Network, is composed of more than 15 global organisations, including the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and is led by the Emory Global Health Institute based in Atlanta, USA.

Dr Jeffrey P. Koplan, Vice-President for Global Health at Emory University, and CHAMPS's Principal Investigator and Executive Director, said: "Our vision for CHAMPS is building knowledge to save children's lives.

"In order to more rapidly reduce child mortality rates, we need a new paradigm in global health partnership and research. CHAMPS is helping focus that effort through surveillance sites that collect and disseminate better data, which helps get the right interventions to children and their families."

Related Links

• The Centre for Maternal, Adolescent, Reproductive and Child Health (MARCH)
• Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS)

Related Courses

• MSc Reproductive & Sexual Health Research

Image: Baby weighed in rural Ethiopia, immediately after birth to make sure they are healthy. Credit: Paolo Patruno Photography/IDEAS