Study finds Four in Five child deaths in Africa are avoidable

A landmark study by the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) Network has found that majority of deaths among children under five in Africa and South Asia are caused by preventable infections.

The Report, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and implemented in Kenya by the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), offers sobering evidence and a critical roadmap for intervention.

Using Minimally Invasive Tissue Sampling (MITS), a technique that allows for postmortem diagnosis without full autopsies, researchers examined 632 deaths of children aged 1 to 59 months across seven high-burden sites.

An astonishing 86.9 percent of these deaths were linked to infectious diseases, and over 82 percent were deemed preventable by expert panels.