Evaluating tetanus neonatorum as a child survival risk in rural Egypt in the absence of reliable cause-of-death registration.

The principal finding of the investigation is that neonatal tenanus is, indeed an important cause of infant death in rural Egypt even though the normal cause-of-death reporting system had not altered health authorities to the problem. The finding is based on a comparison of registration statistics with (anthropological) reconstruction of pregnancies and child survival using the case-history rather than the epidemiological method. The histories go back ten years and refer to 102 women in two villages of Egypt. An incidental finding is confirmation of the known deficiency of infant death reporting, and associated births, with the extra dividend of showing how serious this may be in the neonatal period. Another incidental finding is the identification of induced abortion as a health problem.