[Child health in the states of Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte and Sergipe, Brazil: description of a methodology for community diagnosis].

No reliable data are available from most Brazilian states for a number of child health indicators, such as nutritional status, breast feeding, vaccine coverage, incidence and management of infectious diseases, and coverage of antenatal and perinatal services. However a methodology has been developed for state-wide, community-based health surveys for the obtaining of such information, which was recently applied in studies of representative samples of children from the states of Ceará, Sergipe and Rio Grande do Norte in Northeastern Brazil. The present report describes the key aspects of this methodology and some of the main findings. These results point out to the need for promoting breast feeding, increasing vaccine coverage, improving diarrhoea management with oral rehydration therapy and investing in antenatal and perinatal care, as well as in growth monitoring. They also show that child survival activities are paradoxically concentrated on higher-income, lower risk children. Besides contributing to the planning and evaluation of health programs, community-based child health surveys provide baseline data against which future progress may be ascertained.