Child mortality is one of the most important measures of a country's development. Child mortality remains very high for most countries more so in developing countries from causes that can be easily prevented by simple means at community level. These measures coupled with availability of essential drugs contribute drastically to the reduction of childhood deaths. This book reviews some of these measures and is especially useful for students pursuing training in public and community health. The author has used these notes in training students pursuing training in public health with very good results and it is hoped that other students would greatly benefit from them.

The purpose of this study was to assess the contribution of CBVs, their categories and their motivation. The state alone cannot achieve MDGs by 2015. Health and development problems cannot be solved simply by external interventions, human connections established by CBV, are necessary. Working with volunteers is not completely without cost, it requires a support system to train and maintain them engaged and motivated. Studies appear to concentrate on Community Based Health Volunteers (CBHV), such as CHWs and TBAs . This study sought to find out the contribution of the different categories of CBV to the health and development work relevant to the achievement of the MDGs, their characteristics and how they are motivated.

Communicable and non-communicable diseases account for most deaths in developing countries. Control of diseases is therefore one of the priorities for reducing high mortality seen in these countries. The book is written to assist those people who deal with communities in improving their health status and reducing disease transmission. Students of public health will find this book useful especially in modules that deal with disease control. It is written in very simple language and should be understood by all manner of professions and not necessarily those who have knowledge in health. The author has taught students of community health using the same notes and most of the students found the notes very useful. it is hoped that this book will enable students understand and apply basic principles in the control of communicable and non-communicable diseases within their communities.

This work was developed in response to the increase in number of youth abusing drugs. Prevention of drug abuse is important to the health and socioeconomic stability of a country because the cost of substance abuse affects the well being of the population in all these aspects. In Kenya drug abuse contributes to rising health care costs especially in the management of drug abuse complications like alcoholism, drug addiction, diabetes, cirrhosis, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and neo - natal disorders. This descriptive cross sectional study was conducted in Nyalenda Estate, Kisumu East, Nyanza Province of Kenya on 383 youth drug users selected purposively. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection. The findings revealed that age and sex of the respondents and knowledge of health effects of abused drugs had an influence in drug abuse among the youth. The commonly abused drugs were bhang, local alcoholic brew (chang'aa), and tobacco. Although the youth knew the health effects of drug abuse many of the youth did not associate the habit with common medical conditions like heart problems among others.