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Child health and nutrition

Context

Although almost 10 million children under 5 years still die every year in the world, enormous strides have been made since 1970, when over 17 million child deaths occurred. Seven out of 10 deaths in children under the age of 5 years occur in low-income countries - most of them in Africa - and can be attributed to six major causes: pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, neonatal infections, preterm delivery and asphyxia at birth. Undernutrition is an underlying cause in an estimated 30% of all deaths among children under 5.

What the Global Forum does

The Global Forum convened several meetings at which the concepts underlying the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) were developed. Now an independent Swiss-registered foundation with a secretariat located in Bangladesh, CHNRI is helping to set research priorities in child health, development and nutrition problems, especially in low- and middle-income countries, with a focus on research to inform policies for scaling up effective interventions.