eCommons@AKU Community Health Sciences Department of Community Health Sciences 5-24-2020 Substantial and sustained reduction in under-5 mortality, diarrhea, and pneumonia in Oshikhandass, Pakistan: Evidence from two longitudinal cohort studies 15 years apart C L. Hansen National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA. B J J. McCormick National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA. Iqbal Azam Syed Aga Khan University, [email protected] K Ahmed Karakoram International University, University Road, Gilgit, Pakistan J M. Baker National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA. See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.aku.edu/pakistan_fhs_mc_chs_chs Part of the Community Health and Preventive Medicine Commons, and the Maternal and Child Health Commons Recommended Citation Hansen, C. L., McCormick, B. J., Syed, I. A., Ahmed, K., Baker, J. M., Hussain, E., Jahan, A., Jamison, A. F., Samji, N., Oshikhandass Diarrhea and Pneumonia Project, ., Zaidi, A., Jan, A. (2020). Substantial and sustained reduction in under-5 mortality, diarrhea, and pneumonia in Oshikhandass, Pakistan: Evidence from two longitudinal cohort studies 15 years apart. BMC Public Health, 20(1), 759. Available at: https://ecommons.aku.edu/pakistan_fhs_mc_chs_chs/760 Authors C L. Hansen, B J J. McCormick, Iqbal Azam Syed, K Ahmed, J M. Baker, E Hussain, A Jahan, A F. Jamison, N Samji, Oshikhandass Diarrhea and Pneumonia Project, Anita K. M. Zaidi, and Ahmed Jan This article is available at eCommons@AKU: https://ecommons.aku.edu/pakistan_fhs_mc_chs_chs/760 Hansen et al. BMC Public Health (2020) 20:759 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-08847-7 RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Substantial and sustained reduction in under-5 mortality, diarrhea, and pneumonia in Oshikhandass, Pakistan: evidence from two longitudinal cohort studies 15 years apart C. L. Hansen1, B. J. J. McCormick1, S. I. Azam2, K. Ahmed3, J. M. Baker1, E. Hussain1, A. Jahan1, A. F. Jamison1, S. L. Knobler1, N. Samji2, W. H. Shah1, D. J. Spiro1, E. D. Thomas1, C. Viboud1, Z. A. Rasmussen1* for the Oshikhandass Diarrhea and Pneumonia Project Abstract Background: Oshikhandass is a rural village in northern Pakistan where a 1989–1991 verbal autopsy study showed that diarrhea and pneumonia were the top causes of under-5 mortality. Intensive surveillance, active community health education and child health interventions were delivered in 1989–1996; here we assess improvements in under-5 mortality, diarrhea, and pneumonia over this period and 15 years later. Methods: Two prospective open-cohort studies in Oshikhandass from 1989 to 1996 (Study 1) and 2011–2014 (Study 2) enrolled all children under age 60 months. Study staff trained using WHO guidelines, conducted weekly household surveillance and promoted knowledge on causes and management of diarrhea and pneumonia. Information about household characteristics and socioeconomic status was collected. Hurdle models were constructed to examine putative risk factors for diarrhea and pneumonia. Results: Against a backdrop of considerable change in the socioeconomic status of the community, under-5 mortality, which declined over the course of Study 1 (from 114.3 to 79.5 deaths/1000 live births (LB) between 1989 and 1996), exceeded Sustainable Development Goal 3 by Study 2 (19.8 deaths/ 1000 LB). Reductions in diarrhea prevalence (20.3 to 2.2 days/ Child Year [CY]), incidence (2.1 to 0.5 episodes/ CY), and number of bloody diarrhea episodes (18.6 to 5.2%) seen during Study 1, were sustained in Study 2. Pneumonia incidence was 0.5 episodes /CY in Study 1 and 0.2/CY in Study 2; only 5% of episodes were categorized as severe or very severe in both studies. While no individual factors predicted a statistically significant difference in diarrhea or pneumonia episodes, the combined effect of water, toilet and housing materials was associated with a significant decrease in diarrhea; higher household income was the most protective factor for pneumonia in Study 1. (Continued on next page) * Correspondence: [email protected] 1Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. Hansen et al. BMC Public Health (2020) 20:759 Page 2 of 12 (Continued from previous page) Conclusions: We report a 4-fold decrease in overall childhood mortality, and a 2-fold decrease in childhood morbidity from diarrhea and pneumonia in a remote rural village in Pakistan between 1989 and 2014. We conclude that significant, sustainable improvements in child health may be achieved through improved socioeconomic status and promoting interactions between locally engaged health workers and the community, but that continued efforts are needed to improve health worker training, supervision, and the rational use of medications. Trial registration: Not Applicable. Keywords: Diarrhea, Pneumonia, Under-5 mortality, Infant mortality, Pakistan, Community-based healthcare Background immunization, treatment of common diseases, and Addressing persistent health challenges, such as childhood provision of essential drugs [16, 17]. Concurrent with morbidity and mortality in lower- and middle-income these health initiatives, the Aga Khan Education Service countries, requires sustained intervention, a key compo- began subsidizing girls’ education in the area as early as nent of which is building local engagement and capacity 1969 [21], and the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme in the community [1, 2]. Despite considerable success in began supporting village organizations in the early 1980s reducing the global burden of childhood pneumonia and [22, 23]. diarrhea through, for example, improvements in nutri- Following a severe dysentery outbreak in a neighboring tional status, exclusive breast-feeding, and immunization valley, the Oshikhandass Diarrhea and Dysentery Project for pneumonia and the use of oral rehydration and more was initiated (1989–1996) in a rural, predominantly agri- recently, rotavirus vaccine for diarrhea [3, 4], these two cultural village 20 km southeast of the administrative cap- diseases continue to be leading causes of under-5 mortal- ital of Gilgit and 510 km from Islamabad. Verbal autopsies ity and morbidity even though they are readily preventable showed that over half of all deaths among children youn- [5–8]. Many existing child health interventions require ger than 5 years in this village occurred by age 4 months, sustained behavior change [9] (e.g. hygiene practices or with pneumonia (44%) and diarrhea (35%) being the lead- care-seeking behavior) or substantial infrastructure im- ing causes [24]. Here we assess improvements in under-5 provements (e.g. water and sanitation) to break transmis- mortality, and diarrhea and pneumonia morbidity during sion routes [10], making implementation a challenge. this study, which included active community health edu- In 2015, Pakistan had the third highest mortality rate cation and child health interventions, and describe under- in neonates and children under 5 years and was among 5 diarrhea and pneumonia incidence in this community the ten countries with the highest under-5 mortality 15 years later (2011–2014). We reflect on the epidemi- burden for both diarrhea and lower respiratory infection ology of common childhood illnesses in a low-resource [11, 12]. At the current rates of decline in mortality [13] setting with a history of community-based health inter- Pakistan will not achieve the Sustainable Development ventions against a background of socioeconomic changes. Goal 3 (SDG3) of reducing under-5 mortality to ≤25 deaths/1000 live births (LB) by 2030 [14]. Against this Methods background, it is noteworthy that there have been suc- Data collection and protocol cessful community-level programs to improve health in Two prospective open-cohort studies were conducted in some of the more remote, rural districts of Gilgit- Oshikhandass village, from September 16, 1989 to Sep- Baltistan [15]. tember 15, 1996 (Study 1) and November 11, 2011 to In 1974, the Aga Khan Health Service, Northern Areas March 31, 2014 (Study 2); surveillance in Study 2 was and Chitral, Pakistan (AKHS,P) began developing a net- interrupted from early February until late March, 2012 work of maternal and child health (MCH) centers in Gil- due to political unrest. All children in Oshikhandass under git and Ghizar districts [16, 17]. A 1986 study in the age 60 months with parental/legal guardian consent were Punial Valley, west of Gilgit town, reported an infant enrolled, including those born and migrating into the vil- mortality rate of 158 per 1000 LB, higher than nation- lage, and followed to 60 months, out-migration, or death; wide estimates for rural Pakistan [18]. In response, the total number of children was updated continually AKHS,P launched an intensive primary health care pro- throughout the study. Women from the village, nomi- gram in 1987 that trained volunteer community health nated by local women’s organizations, were recruited and workers and existing traditional birth attendants, super- trained in World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.