Improving child health through healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies in rural Ethiopia.

Many countries have made progress in achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goal 4: to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015. Ethiopias achievement in reducing child mortality has been remarkable but still today one of every 17 Ethiopian children dies before age 1. The Ethiopian Child Survival Strategy recognizes the complex set of factors that influence child health including high fertility and inadequate birth spacing. Several aspects of womens fertility behavior also influence child health and survival including mothers age at the birth of her children length of birth intervals and the number of births a woman has already had. Family planning can improve child health and survival by preventing births to older and younger women (ages that carry increased risks to maternal health) reducing the number of births per woman and lengthening the interval between births.