Article
Decrease of overall and childhood mortality from 1993 to 2007 in a developing country of West Africa
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Authors
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Gisela Kynast-Wolf
- Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg
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Ali Sié
- Centre de Recherche en Santé de Nouna, Nouna
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Gabriele Stieglbauer
- Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg
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Louis Niamba
- Centre de Recherche en Santé de Nouna, Nouna
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Heribert Ramroth
- Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg
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Heiko Becher
- Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg
| Published: | September 20, 2011 |
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Outline
Text
Introduction: In several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), mortality rates show some declines in recent years, although data quality limits firm conclusions. Monitoring and evaluation of mortality rates play a major role in formulating good public health policy [1], [2], [3]. Here, we report trends of all-cause mortality in a population of about 80,000 individuals under constant surveillance for the years 1993 to 2007 in a rural area of Burkina Faso [4].
Methods: Age- and sex-specific death rates were calculated by age group and calendar year. To investigate the dependence of mortality rates on age, sex, and year, we used Poisson regression. For presentation we combined the yearly data into four periods. To assess the effect of age the method of fractional polynomials was used [5].
Results: 9,796 deaths were recorded from 1993 to 2007. All-cause and under five mortality was 12.8 (95% Confidence Interval 12.5-13.0) and 31.7 (95% CI 30.7-32.6) by 1000, respectively. The usual ‘bathtub' shape of the rates, using the fractional polynomial method, showed high mortality in young and old people for the four defined periods. No remarkable differences in sex were detected. Noticeable is a decrease of all-cause mortality rates over the years, all-cause mortality was 13.6 (95% CI 12.3-15.0) in 1993 and 10.9 (95% CI 10.2-11.6) in 2007. Under five mortality was 32.3 (95% CI 27.5-37.1) in 1993, and 27.2 (95% CI 24.5-29.9) in 2007. The average decline in rates as obtained from Poisson regression will be presented.
Conclusions: The results show that there is still an urgent need to support young children living in malaria high transmission areas of SSA, important to work on an acceleration towards achieving the Millenium Development Goal 4.A “Reduce the under-five mortality rate by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015”.
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