Social-economic determinants of infant and childhood mortality in Shinyanga region in Tanzania
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Date
1990
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University of Dar es Salaam
Abstract
This thesis deals with Socio-Economic Determinants of Infant and Childhood Mortality in Shinyanga. The study was prompted by the high levels of infant and childhood mortality in some regions of Tanzania. Shinyanga was selected as a case study because it was one of those regions with high infant and childhood mortality rates by 1978. It was proposed that the high levels of infant and childhood mortality in that region could be explained by:
(i) Low educational achievement levels among Women;
(ii) Low income levels within the households;
(iii) Poor accessibility to clean water supply;
(iv) Poor accessibility to health facilities; manifested in transport difficulties and lack of drugs in
the institutions;
(v) Low frequency of cooking and inaccessibility to food for children in between meal times and
(vi) Power relationships within the households.
The objectives were to find out how much of the child mortality levels could be explained by the socioeconomic factors and cultural aspects with respect to the country wide child immunisation programme. Applying Trussell's technique and the North Family Model life Table, it was found that Shinyanga had a mortality rate of 93% and 139% for infant and childhood mortality respectively. The study has shown that this high infant and childhood mortality rate can not be explained by a single unrelated socio-economic factor(s) but by a function of an interaction of different socioeconomic determinants. The findings showed that there were significantly strong relationships between education, water, medicine and the decision making power which influenced income distribution within the households and infant and childhood mortality. With the exception of education of the mother, where inverse relationships were observed; all other variables showed positive relationship. Accessibility to clean water supply was observed to be the main problem along with poor knowledge, income accessibility food provision and the decision making within the households thus causing high infant and childhood mortality in Shinyanga. The improvement of socio-economic factors generally, will reduce the high levels of infant and childhood mortality, but more emphasis should be exerted on accessibility to clean water supply and level of knowledge among women. Ministries of Water, Education, Health and Transport should co-operate to reduce the problems of clean water in accessibility knowledge health status and transport so as to reduce the levels of child deaths in Shinyanga.
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Keywords
Infants, Mortality, Children, Tanzania (region), Shinyanga
Citation
Igosha, J.T.K (1990) Social-economic determinants of infant and childhood mortality in Shinyanga region in Tanzania, Masters dissertation, University of Dar es Salaam, Available at (http://41.86.178.3/internetserver3.1.2/detail.aspx?parentpriref=)