Child Mortality in Mozambique: a Review of Recent Trends and Attributable Causes

Abstract

In the last 25 years, child mortality has significantly dropped at a global level. Understanding particularities of child mortality at the national level is useful to tailor health policy to those conditions requiring more attention. In Mozambique, a variety of efforts have been made to better characterize the overall child mortality and to describe the main contributors for death. In this review, we attempt to contextualize current knowledge on causes of pediatric deaths in Mozambique. The available data regarding the principal causes of death in Mozambican children point out to infectious diseases and neonatal causes as the principal causes of preventable deaths, with important variations in recent years in line with the epidemiological changes seen in the country as a result of reductions in malaria transmission and the impact of the nationwide introduction of different conjugate vaccines. Data regarding the main causes of death among children in Mozambique are patchy, outdated, and in many cases based on methodologies with many underlying limitations, which make them unreliable. More robust postmortem methodologies to study the underlying causes of mortality, currently being introduced in a surveillance sentinel site of the country, will surely contribute to improve our understanding of what is really killing children in this country.