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type of water is not from protected areas, thus
might cause infection and diarrhea. The researcher
expected sanitation facility would show some
significant relationship with child mortality
because non-standard sanitation facility may cause
infectious disease and diarrhea as well. Finding
from antenatal care conformed with other studies
(Goldenberg et al., 1992; Friscella 1995) showing
statistically significant relationship with child
mortality; however, there was no statistical impact
of ANC on child mortality from logistic regression
in this study.
CONCLUSION
In this study, factors affecting child mortality
were examined from total of 3,924 children who
were born as last child in the preceding five years
before the survey took place. As a result of binary
logistic regression, the factor of ever breastfed
had the strongest relationship with and impact on
child mortality. There was only 3% of children
who never breastfed, but 18 per cent of the
total children never breastfed experienced child
mortality. Furthermore, those who never breastfed
were 96 per cent more likely to die than those
who ever breastfed were. Another determining
factor that had impact on child mortality was
mother’s age. Children born to mothers less than
20 years old died more than the children born
to other age cohorts of mothers. This result was
similar to J shape that the researchers had found
in terms of relationship between mother’s age
and child mortality (Bongaarts, 1987; Davis,
1988). The factor of child’s gender had impact
on child mortality. Male children experienced
more mortality than female children which could
be due to the conventional fact that the girls
are biologically stronger than boys. One of the
strongest factors that affected child mortality was
child weight at birth; i.e., children who weighed
less than 2,500 gm at birth tended to die more
than those weighed more than 2,500 gm did
(McCormick, 1985; Kiely & Susser, 1992).
The main limitations of this study were, firstly,
very little number of child mortality, secondly, no
break down of categories on source of drinking
water which could have statistically significant
impact on child mortality.
RECOMMENDATION
The fact of whether a child ever breastfed or not
had the highest impact on child mortality according
to this study. Therefore, awareness raising
activities, promotions, and IEC about benefits and
importance of breastfeeding should be carried out
for pregnant women through family clinic doctors
during antenatal care visits, as well as at clinic
and community centers. Policy makers, GOs and
NGOs should pay more attention to strengthen the
family planning programs to delay childbearing
during very young ages (less than 20 years) which
often results in low birth weight. Future researchers
should aim to collect birth history of women in
full, not as truncated, so that one may carry out
comprehensive analysis of factors affecting child
mortality, and produce effective and targeted
recommendations to the policy makers.
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