Two-thirds of infant deaths from Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) occurred in the community and would have been excluded from mortality estimates based on hospital data.
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(Boston) Children in Zambia under age 5 die at a rate that is between nearly six to more than 10 times higher than those in the U.S; it is estimated at 40-75 per 1000, compared to 6.98 per 1000. Identifying why these children are dying is the mission of Rotem Lapidot, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM). Significantly, over 80 percent of all community infant deaths involved some form of delay. While it is impossible to know what would have occurred in the absence of such delays, the majority of infant deaths in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, are from causes for which effective treatments currently exist, explained Lapidot, the corresponding author on the study that appeared online in the journal