Integrated management of childhood illness: Bringing treatment closer to home

Globally, the main target of all child health programs is to ensure a reduction in infant/under-five mortality. Globally the progress has been observed in reducing child mortality rate the average annual rate of reduction has remained persistently low in many developing countries. The Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) is a cost-effective strategy that advocates use of evidence-based protocol in the management of common etiology of childhood illness. Despite availability of data on the effectiveness of IMCI in child health and health system, current global coverage of IMCI is far from expected. The objective of the present article is to suggest long-term, cost-effective and primary health care based measures which will aid in extending the child health services to the inaccessible areas. IMCI targets children aged between 0-2 months and 2-5 years and encourages the use of simple clinical signs for detecting cases. To maximize the scope of benefit, IMCI program assessment should be done to ascertain the barriers in effective implementation. To conclude, systematic implementation of the IMCI strategy in community well backed by trained health workers can definitely improve the prognosis of childhood illness.