Early childhood mortality--a rural study

The present study was conducted in 9 villages of Rural Health Training Centre, Jawan, Aligarh, India, having 1792 registered families. The infant mortality rate was 79.3 per 1000 live births. Higher mortality in children between 1-2 years (29.6/1000) in comparison to 2-5 years (16.2/1000) reflected the higher vulnerability of children below 2 years. Diarrhoea (21.2%) and neonatal factors (21.2%) were the major cause of infant mortality followed by pneumonia (18.2%) and tetanus (15.1%). Diarrhoea (32.2%), pneumonia (22.6%) and malnutrition (12.9%) were the major killers in children between 1-5 years. Mortality in females was higher than males in infancy. Risk factors associated with infant mortality included extremes of maternal age (< 20+ > 35 years) primipara or multipara and illiterate mothers.