Trend and Determinants of Infant Mortality in East Africa
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Date
2020-07-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
An understanding the risk factors related to infant mortality is to guide the development
of focused and evidence-based health interventions to reduce infant mortality. This study
aimed to see trend and identify detrminants of infant mortality in East African countries
by Demographic Health Surveys. To achieve these objectives, multilevel logistic regres-
sion model has been used. The results show that, overall infant mortality was decreasing
over-time in East Africa. The average percentage change of infant mortality is signi_-
cantly decrease by 49.3% in east Africa. Among the East African countries the lowest
and highest percentage change of infant mortality observed in Rwanda and Mozambique,
respectively. Multilevel analyses shows that child related factors: birth type, birth size,
birth order, sex of child, anemia level, breastfed and factors related to mother: mother
education, age of mother at _rst birth, religion, contraceptive use, marital status and
_nally, factors related to household: family size, residence were found to be statistically
signi_cant predictors of infant mortality in East Africa. Survey year's has also statis-
tically signi_cant e_ect on infant mortality in East African countries. Infant mortality
is high in all East African countries in which household members are four and more,
also birth type is statistically signi_cant predictor of infant mortality in all East African
countries. In order to reduce infant mortality in East Africa, awareness creation e_orts
have to increase family planning, contraception, improve the education level of parents,
encourage breastfeeding, providing availability of toilet and safe water. To this e_ect, the
outcome of reducing infant mortality is achieved by considering those signi_cant factors
related to infant birth.
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Keywords
Infant Mortality, Trend, Random Intercept Model, Random Slope Model, Intraclass Crrelation Coe_Cient, Marginal Quasi Likelihood(Mql), Penalized Quasi Like- lihood(PQL)