Muthanna Medical Journal
Volume 9, Issue 2, 2022 Page 146-154
http://dx.doi.org/10.52113/1/1/2022-146-154
Abbas Mehdi Kadim ¹*, Mohammed Abdul Kareem Abdullah, Hind Fadhil Kareem
Correspondence author: qaisajam1981@yahoo.com
¹Babylon health directorate, Babylon
Received 29 August 2022, Accepted 18 October 2022, Available online 21November 2022.
Copyright © 2022 AK. This is article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Iraq lacks data on under-5 mortality causes. The vital registration system is poor in rural regions where access to health care is restricted and most fatalities occur at home, outside the health system, and the reason of death remains undetected. Knowing under-5 mortality patterns and trends helps decision-makers evaluate programmatic requirements, priorities interventions, and track progress. The aim of study is to describe the main causes of death under 5 years and evaluate the effects of different variables like: age, sex, body weight, residency, day and time of death and month of year, on the cause of death. This is a retrospective study which was carried out in order to find out the main causes of death among children younger than 5 years in Babylon province for the period of one year from 1st January 2010 to 31 December 2010, in formation was collected from patients files and death certificates. The leading causes of death among under-five children was found to be prematurity (26.8 %) , sepsis (18.4 %), congenital anomaly (15.4 %), birth asphyxia (7.7 %) and pneumonia (7.4 %), (86.2 %) of total mortality occurs in the first year of age, of this (59.4 %) occurs within first month and (26.8 %) in the other eleven months, most deaths happened in male, live in rural area, with weight < 2,500 Kg, during first day of hospitalization, after mid night, in January and July. Our study showed deaths during neonatal period was more than half, most of them within first 28 days of life, children lived in rural area were more prone to death, the first day of admission was critical day and critical time was after mid night.
Keywords: Death, Children under-age of five years, Congenital anomaly