Factors associated with child mortality rate in Uganda

Abstract

The child mortality rate (under 5-mortality rate) refers to the probability of dying between birth and exactly 5 years of age, expressed per 1,000 live births. Globally, the total number of under-5 deaths worldwide has declined from 12.6 million in 1990 to 5.0 million in 2020 since 1990. The research was focused on an investigation of the associated child mortality rate in Uganda, which included the Age of the mother at the first birth, Sex of the child, Residence of the mother, Religion of the mother, Education status of the mother, Size of household, Employment status of the mother. The research was based on secondary data obtained from UBOS Uganda Demographic Health Survey 2016. Data cleaning and analysis was done on 18505 observations using Stata (15 version). Univariate analysis was conducted to assess the baseline characteristics from the data. Bivariate analysis was conducted to determine the association between child mortality rate and each of the factors under investigation. Only variables that were statistically significant at this level of analysis were considered for further analysis. Multivariate analysis was performed using multiple logistic regression (robust) model and conclusions were based on the log odds ratio and the P–value, to investigate the influence of demographic and socio-economic factors on child mortality rate. Under multivariate analysis, there was a significant association between religion of the mother, marital status of the mother, education level of the mother, sex of the child and size of the household with child mortality rate. In conclusion, factors associated with child mortality were attributed to demographic and socio-economic factors as provided by the study which included, residence of the mother, sex of the child, religion of the mother, level of education of the mother, employment status of the mother and size of household significantly influenced child mortality rate. The researcher therefore recommends that further research needs to be done in the various parts of Uganda to assess the child mortality rate in the entire parts of Uganda, for instance Northern, Eastern, Western and Central regions, and further research should be carried out on age of the mothers at their first birth at large towards the child mortality rate.