Factors affecting under five mortality in coast and central Kenya

Abstract

The objective of this study was to compare determ-inants of under five mortality in different regions. This study is about investigating two areas with significantly different mortality trends but using common variables, namely type of place residence, wealth index, maternal education, mother's age at birth, children ever born, source of drinking water and type of toilet facility. The critical issue in this study was to establish to what extent factors that cause under five mortality in Central Province are similar to those in Coast Province, Central Province is a high mortality region while Coast is a low mortality region. Specifically, this study aimed at establishing the effect of socio-economic, biodemographic and environmental factors on under five mortality in the Coast and Central Provinces of Kenya. The Mosley and Chen (1984) framework, has been used as the platform for viewing the effect of the determinants on under five mortality in the different regions. The study used the 2003 KDHS as the source of data and the children under five in the preceding five years to the survey as the unit of analysis. The study population had a sample of 1429 children who were under five with 85 deaths. Descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression have been-used' for analyzing the data. The factors that had a statistical significant effect on under five mortality were maternal education and availability 6f a toilet facility in Coast Province, while in Central Province, none of the selected factors were significantly associated with under five mortality. The results show that no variable had a significant effect on under five mortality among the selected factors in Central Province, while in Coast Province, the absence of a toilet and maternal education were significantly associated with under five mortality.