History and epidemiology

Abstract

There has been a marked reduction in child mortality in the last few decades but there were still 6.6 million deaths in children aged 0–14 years worldwide in 2016. The vast majority of those deaths (5.6 million) occurred in children aged under 5 years and 98% of these deaths occurred in the low- and middle-income (LMCI) countries. After a brief history of the development of children’s palliative care (CPC) and key definitions, this chapter summarizes the epidemiological data on mortality and prevalence of life-limiting (LLC) and life-threatening conditions (LTC). This chapter also highlights the gaps in these data and concludes with advice on how to use local, regional, and national data to plan services.