Suchergebnisse

BACKGROUND: A substantial portion of child deaths take place in countries with recent history of armed conflict and political instability. However, the extent to which armed conflict is an important cause of child mortality, especially in Africa, remains unknown. METHODS: Using information on (1) geocoded location, timing, and intensity of armed conflicts and (2) the location, timing, and survival of under-1 and under-5 children in 35 African countries from 1995 to 2015, we matched child survival with proximity to armed conflict. We measured the increase in mortality risk for children exposed to armed conflicts within 50km in the year of birth and, to study conflicts' extended health risks, up to 250km away and 10 years prior to birth. We also examined the effects of conflicts of varying intensity and chronicity (conflicts lasting several years), and effect heterogeneity by residence and child sex. We then estimate the number and portion of under-1 and under-5 deaths related to conflict. FINDINGS: We analyzed 15,441 armed conflict events that led to 968,444 armed conflict deaths, 1.99 million births, and 133,361 infant deaths (infant mortality rate of 67 deaths per 1,000 births). A child born within 50km of an armed conflict had a risk of dying before reaching age one of 5.2 per 1,000 births higher than being born in the same region during periods without conflict (95% CI 3.7-6.7; a 7.7% increase above baseline). This ranged from 3.0% increase for armed conflicts with 1-4 deaths to 26.7% increase for armed conflicts with >1,000 deaths. We find evidence of increased mortality risk from an armed conflict up to 100km away, and for 8 years after conflicts, with cumulative increase in infant mortality 2-4 times higher than the contemporaneous increase. In the entire continent, the number of infant deaths related to conflict from 1995 to 2015 were between 3.2 and 3.6 times the number of direct deaths from armed conflicts. CONCLUSIONS: Child mortality in Africa is substantially and sustainably increased in times of ...

Improving compliance with environmental regulations is critical for promoting clean environments and healthy populations. In South Asia, brick manufacturing is a major source of pollution but is dominated by small-scale, informal producers who are difficult to monitor and regulate—a common challenge in low-income settings. We demonstrate a low-cost, scalable approach for locating brick kilns in high-resolution satellite imagery from Bangladesh. Our approach identifies kilns with 94.2% accuracy and 88.7% precision and extracts the precise GPS coordinates of every brick kiln across Bangladesh. Using these estimates, we show that at least 12% of the population of Bangladesh ([Formula: see text] 18 million people) live within 1 km of a kiln and that 77% and 9% of kilns are (illegally) within 1 km of schools and health facilities, respectively. Finally, we show how kilns contribute up to 20.4 [Formula: see text] g/ [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text] (particulate matter of a diameter less than 2.5 [Formula: see text] m) in Dhaka when the wind blows from an unfavorable direction. We document inaccuracies and potential bias with respect to local regulations in the government data. Our approach demonstrates how machine learning and Earth observation can be combined to better understand the extent and implications of regulatory compliance in informal industry.