The impact and monitoring of sanitation and hygiene interventions in child survival and development in Sub Saharan Africa

Globally, nearly 9 million children die before year of five yearly due to pneumonia, diarrhoea malaria and other diseases according to the latest estimates in 2008 (WHO/UNICEF, 2010a, p.11). This represents a tremendous improvement in contrast to child mortality in 1970 (17 million), however much remains to be done, since children and infants are a vulnerable group whose voice is hardly heard. It is estimated that globally over 4,100 children under-five die each day due to diarrhoea alone, with 46% of all child diarrhoea death occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa where 10 out of 15 countries globally with the highest rates are located (UNICEF/WHO, 2009, p.7). Diarrhoea therefore becomes the biggest killer for death of children under-five in Sub-Saharan African countries (Velleman and Slaymaker, 2011, p.5)....