Maternal and sociodemographic correlates of child morbidity in Bas Zaire: the effects of maternal reporting.

Cross-sectional survey data, collected in Bas Zaire from the mothers of 1200 urban and 1670 rural children born in the last 5 years, are used to assess variations in diarrheal, malarial, helminthic, and other child morbidities by selected household, maternal and child factors. In a multivariate analysis, we focus on maternal age and birth order as determinants of recent illnesses to observe any parallels in their effects on child mortality. These relationships are found after adjusting for bias from differential maternal perceptions of illnesses.