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- Published on: 2 October 2018
- Published on: 2 October 2018Understanding the Kenyan governance in context to deprived population to reduce under five child mortality: time to take off the blindfold
Dear Editor, We have read with interest the paper ‘Accelerating Kenya’s progress to 2030: understanding the determinants of under-five mortality from 1990 to 2015’ by Keats et. al (May, 2018). The authors discuss drivers of change in mortality of under five year old children in Kenya in relation to health systems, policies and financing. We believe that further discussion of conflict and governance is required in order to understand Kenya’s progress towards sustainable development. The Composite Coverage Index (CCI) calculates the coverage of preventive and curative interventions. The index looks at coverage of family planning, skilled birth attendance, skilled antenatal care, BCG-measles and DPT3 vaccinations, diarrhoea treatment and pneumonia care. We agree that increasing health workforce increases coverage of interventions and raises the CCI. In contrast, the CCI remains low in areas of conflict, displaced populations and refugee settlements despite existence of a high health workforce. For example, in the North Rift Valley and North Eastern counties (except Turkana) there is a lower CCI than in southern counties (such as Tana River, Narok, Kajiado and Kilifi) despite a larger workforce [2]. Although refugee settlement areas receive huge workforce support from humanitarian organisations and the government for coverage of interventions targeted towards health of children under five, a household and death survey carried out by Médecins Sans...
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None declared.