Journal Article

Mapping child growth failure in Africa between 2000 and 2015

Reiner, Robert C., Liu, Patrick Y., Ray, Sarah E., Rawat, Rahul, Gibson, Harry S., Smith, David L., Pigott, David M., Mokdad, Ali H., Osgood-Zimmerman, Aaron, Graetz, Nicholas, Longbottom, Joshua, Gething, Peter W., Piwoz, Ellen G., Cameron, Ewan, Herrero, Mario, Bhatt, Samir, Lim, Stephen S., Pickering, Brandon V., Noor, Abdisalan M., Fullman, Nancy, Krause, L. Kendall, Mayala, Benjamin K., Rao, Puja, Earl, Lucas, Letourneau, Ian D., Kinyoki, Damaris K., Millear, Anoushka I., Levine, Aubrey J., Deshpande, Aniruddha, Mosser, Jonathan F., Weiss, Daniel J., Hay, Simon I., Browne, Annie J., Kassebaum, Nicholas J., Murray, Christopher J. L., Stubbs, Rebecca W., Wiens, Kirsten E., Shields, Chloe, Burstein, Roy, Casey, Daniel C., Henry, Nathaniel J.

2018

Overview

Insufficient growth during childhood is associated with poor health outcomes and an increased risk of death. Between 2000 and 2015, nearly all African countries demonstrated improvements for children under 5 years old for stunting, wasting, and underweight, the core components of child growth failure. Here we show that striking subnational heterogeneity in levels and trends of child growth remains. If current rates of progress are sustained, many areas of Africa will meet the World Health Organization Global Targets 2025 to improve maternal, infant and young child nutrition, but high levels of growth failure will persist across the Sahel. At these rates, much, if not all of the continent will fail to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target—to end malnutrition by 2030. Geospatial estimates of child growth failure provide a baseline for measuring progress as well as a precision public health platform to target interventions to those populations with the greatest need, in order to reduce health disparities and accelerate progress. Geospatial estimates of child growth failure in Africa provide a baseline for measuring progress and a precision public health platform to target interventions to those populations with the greatest need. Mapping Africa's path to prosperity The UN's Sustainable Development Goals set a range of targets to improve global health and prosperity. Their success will rely on high-quality data to assess current progress and needs on a local scale. Simon Hay and colleagues study data gathered at the finest spatial scale yet of child growth and educational attainment across 51 African countries. The data show the spatiotemporal progression of these measures between 2000 and 2015 and reveal geographical inequalities. The authors use Bayesian-model-based geospatial mapping to estimate the prevalence of multiple outcomes related to child growth failure and educational inequality on a 5 kilometre by 5 kilometre scale, enabling them to estimate where various targets related to nutrition and educational attainment are more or less likely to be met.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: 692/499 / 692/699/1702/295 / 706/134 / Africa - epidemiology / Age / Analysis / Child Development / Child health / Child mortality / Child nutrition / Child, Preschool / Children / Children & youth / Datasets / Failure / Female / Geostatistics / Goals / Growth / Growth Disorders - epidemiology / Growth Disorders - prevention & control / Heterogeneity / Human nutrition / Humanities and Social Sciences / Humans / Infant / Infant, Newborn / Malaria / Male / Malnutrition / Malnutrition - epidemiology / Malnutrition - prevention & control / multidisciplinary / Nutrition / Partial differential equations / Prevalence / Public health / Public Health - statistics & numerical data / Science / Sustainable development / Thinness - epidemiology / Thinness - prevention & control / Trends / Underweight / Wasting Syndrome - epidemiology / Wasting Syndrome - prevention & control / Wetlands / World Health Organization