The causes of death of hospitalized children in Angola.

Angola currently has the second mortality rate for children in the world. A cross-sectional study was performed containing 1322 random selected children of the 10288 hospitalized from December 2004 to May 2005 at the Hospital Pediátrico David Bernardino, the largest hospital in Angola and health reference centre located in the capital city of Luanda. Hospital mortality was 18% and the main causes of death were: malaria (22.4%), undernutrition (21.5%), pneumonia (11.8%), neonatal affections (9.3%) and meningitis (8.0%). Programmes must be rapidly implemented to eradicate undernutrition, improve perinatal care and control infections, especially malaria, pneumonia and meningitis.