Current focus on infectious diseases in childhood

Despite the significant decrease in child mortality in Brazil in recent decades, and the great advances in the immunization program, infectious diseases still occupy a prominent place among public health problems.

The mortality of Brazilian children under 5 years old decreased by 67.6% during a 25-year period, between 1990 and 2015; however, among the top ten causes of death in 2015, several infectious diseases still occupy a prominent place.¹

The main component of under-5 mortality in children is neonatal mortality.¹ In a recent estimate of causes of neonatal mortality involving four million deaths worldwide, infectious causes ranked first, accounting for 35% of the total.²

These data are already enough to justify the importance of choosing the topic of infection for the present supplement. Here we will address neonatal sepsis, septic shock, diarrhea, and encephalitis, which all are important causes of child mortality.

We did not forget the arbovirus infections and among them, the Zika virus, which caused a national epidemic of microcephaly, especially in the Brazilian Northeast region³; the community pneumonias, which, globally, are a frequent cause of under-5 mortality⁴; tuberculosis, which remains prevalent in our country⁵; and opportunistic infections, osteoarticular infections, and urinary tract infections,which are so frequently observed in outpatients.

We could not fail to address in an article the number one item of the “Choosing Wisely” campaign of the American Academy of Pediatrics: “Antibiotics should not be used for viral respiratory diseases” (sinusitis, pharyngitis, bronchitis, and bronchiolitis).⁶

Thus, I hope readers will enjoy this issue and get an update on the current focus on infectious diseases in childhood.

Conflicts of interest

The author declares no conflicts of interest.