Causes of death among hospitalized children under 5 years of age in Sulaymani Pediatrics Teaching Hospital

Back ground: Knowledge about the causes of
death in children is important to evaluate
health system progress and provide what is
needed for an efficient design of health care
delivery system.
Objective: To find out the main causes of
death in children under 5years & evaluate the
effects of different variables like: age, gender,
body weight, residency, and months of year for
the causes of death.
Patient& Method: This is a retrospective study
which was carried out in order to find out the
main causes of death among admitted children
younger than 5 year in Sulaymani Pediatrics
Teaching Hospital for the period of 5 years
from of January 1st 2001 to December 31st
2005 included. The total numbers of admitted
cases was 137,739 out of which 1455 had died.
We obtained the information from case files of
the deceased patients.
Results: The incidence of death among
admitted patients was (1.06%), the rate was
higher in male gender (59.3%), while in female
it was (40.7 %), with a P-value of <0.05 which
is significant statistically with male to female
ratio 1.48:1.
Deaths were mainly in neonates (61.8 %
of all age groups in the study) with a p-value
of <0.05. Death was mainly in those with body
weights <2.5kg, which accounts for (42.1%).
The main cause of death in neonate was
prematurity (54.7%) while diarrhea and Acute
Respiratory Infections (ARI) were main causes
during infancy (57.4%, 15.9%) respectively.
Seasonal variation of died cases showed
that were two peaks of death, one in June and
another in November with a p-value of <0.05.
The percentage of death in the rural and urban
area were (64.5%, 35.5 %) respectively, with a
p-value of <0.05 which is also significant.
Conclusion: This study has revealed that
prematurity was the main cause of death
among neonate while diarrhea and acute
respiratory diseases were the main causes of
death during infancy. Malignancy was the least
common cause of death. Deaths were mainly
in neonates. There was a significant
association between deaths and gender, body
weight, residency& the months of the year.
Key words: mortality rate, death cause,
children under five.
IRAQI J MED SCI, 2009; VOL.7 (1):11-20