High coverage of available interventions by 2025 can prevent almost three-quarters of neonatal deaths, and can save around 2 million lives per year (Bhutta et al., 2014).
Research is crucial to understand the magnitude of emerging and re-emerging diseases, disease prevention and management policies, options for improving the cost-effectiveness and coverage of available interventions, and opportunities for developing new tools and products for combatting the old and the new health challenges.
To achieve universal coverage of malaria vector control interventions, it is imperative to understand communities' malaria-related knowledge and perceptions and their use of available interventions at different eco-epidemiological strata of the country.
We have two primary strategic goals: achieve universal mosquito-net coverage by the end of this year; and eliminate preventable malaria deaths by 2015 by scaling up coverage of all other available interventions (including access to rapid diagnostic tests, treatment with artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT), intermittent preventive treatment, and indoor residual spraying).
The coverage of available guides is good, although many of these are now severely dated.
Available data on current coverage of the interventions and their costs and effectiveness allow current health attainment and costs to be estimated, represented as point *.
Data are available on coverage of interventions such as antenatal care and institutional delivery (8), and studies have provided insights as to what is needed in terms of, for example, human resources, equipment, supplies, and routines (17– 17).
Although there are additional questions about participatory community processes and community capacity to be explored, available evidence offers important signposts for how to accelerate progress in increasing the coverage of essential interventions for maternal survival.
It is therefore of interest to study inequalities in coverage of these interventions (see Table 2 for a list of the intervention coverage indicators for which data were available in our data sources, and their definitions, included in the study).
A neonatal series report published in the Lancet in 2005 estimated that a reduction in neonatal deaths of up to 72% could be achieved through already available interventions, if provided at high coverage [ 3].
We present a three-step approach to improvement of the effective coverage of essential interventions.
