ABSTRACT

Infant mortality rate is one of the most important medical indicators of the quality of health services provided in a country or region. The goal of the study is to detect causes of the infant mortality in Edirne province in 2012 and 2013 and to investigate the factors that affect this rate.

This descriptive study was carried out retrospectively and the authors examined Infant Mortality Provincial Preliminary Examination reports for babies. Causes of mortality and preventability were examined, analyzed on SPSS 20.0 program, percentage and Chi-square test were used in statistical analysis and p<0.05 level was accepted as significant.

Infant mortality rate was found to be 8.3 per thousand in 2012 and 7.5 per thousand in 2013. The first three causes of mortality and their percentages were prematurity-immaturity 39.4% (n=26), congenital anomalies-syndromes 13.6% (n=9) and congenital heart diseases 12.1% (n=8). 86.4% of child deaths (n=57) occurred due to unpreventable causes and 9.1% (n=6) occurred due to preventable causes while no decision could be made in 2 cases and no data were reported in 1 stillbirth case. 59.6% (n=34) of the babies whose mortality causes were unpreventable died at early neonatal period while 100% (n=6) of the babies whose mortality causes were preventable died at post-neonatal period and no significant difference was detected (p<0.05). The rate of unpreventable causes increased as gestational age and birth weight decreased while the rate of preventable causes increased as gestational age and birth weight increased and a significant difference was detected (p<0.05).

Neonatal deaths comprise a vast majority of infant mortality cases in our country and worldwide. Decreasing prematurity, improving perinatal care, developing staff and technical requirements of newborn intensive care units, increasing the number of centers to give medical and surgical care for congenital heart diseases, terminating congenital anomalies during pregnancy will help dropping infant mortality rate.