RESEARCH ARTICLE

China’s three-year health r Background well as from other diseases attributable to malnutrition. Li et al. BMC Public Health (2015) 15:38 DOI 10.1186/s12889-015-1364-7can weaken the link between poverty and disease and so100083, China Full list of author information is available at the end of the articleGlobally, approximately 2.4 million deaths (4.2 % of all deaths) [1] could be prevented each year if everyone practised appropriate hygiene and had good, reliable sanitation and drinking water. Most of these deaths were of children in developing countries and primarily re-sulted from diarrhoea and subsequent malnutrition, as Although it is rarely discussed alongside the three major diseases that attract attention from the international public health community, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, diarrhoea alone kills more children each year than these three combined [2]. The keys to diarrhoea’s control are hygiene, sanitation, and water. In 2010, Bartram and Caimcross noted that “The household burden weighs most heavily upon the poor, but well-conceived sanitation and water programmes * Correspondence: miaohanxinyun@126.com2China National Health Development Research Center, NHFPC, BeijingAbstract Background: Accessible improved sanitation is critical to child health, and inequities in improved sanitation can be interpreted as health inequities across socio-economic groups. From 2009 to 2011, the Chinese government invested 4.448 billion yuan for rural sanitation improvement through a 3-year health reform program. This study assesses the inequity of sanitation improvement in rural China from 2003 to 2011 and examines whether the 3-year health reform program promoted equity in sanitation improvement