PRINCIPLES OF SCREENING PROGRAMMES FOR MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH

Key words: Screening, Evidence-based medicine, Child surveillance

The Author reviews the basic principles - such as ethics, quality effectiveness and cost, equity- that should inform screening programmes. The need for rigorous application of the epidemiological method for evaluating screening interventions is stressed and the various levels of evidence that can be produced by different research approaches are illustrated. This procedure is applied to the various screening programmes that have been proposed for maternal and child health, and evidence-based guidelines are provided on this bases.