Monitoring morbidity and mortality of preventable childhood diseases

WHO (2015) reports a decline in the under-five mortality rate from 12.7 million per year in 1990 to 5.9 million in 2015. This is the first year that this figure has fallen below 6 million. However, 2 to 3 million of these deaths were attributed to vaccine-preventable diseases. Improving immunisation coverage is therefore advocated as an essential measure for the continued reduction of child mortality. In the DRC, immunisation coverage rates have increased significantly. This allows us to assume that the morbidity-mortality curve of vaccine-preventable childhood diseases would also be descending. Hence the need for this study to verify this. The surveys were conducted in the two hospital institutions mentioned above. The study population was children aged 0-5 years received (Cases) and those who died during the years 2015, 2016 and 2017. The evolution of vaccine-preventable childhood diseases is studied together with that of three common but non-vaccine-preventable diseases: diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition and malaria.