Epidemiologic Evaluation of Mortality of Children aged 2 to 15 years Referring to the Emergency Department of Imam Khomeini Hospital in Jiroft in 2016-2019

One of the important indicators of development and health in countries is the child mortality rate. In recent years, the child mortality rate in Iran has decreased; yet, it remains higher than other developing countries. Therefore, this study epidemiologically investigates mortality of children aged 2 - 15 years referring to the emergency department of Imam Khomeini Hospital in Jiroft, Iran, in 2016-2019.

The present study is a descriptive-analytical cross-sectional study. In this study, 84 cases were reviewed. A researcher referred to the archives of Imam Khomeini Hospital in Jiroft, extracted the information of all deceased patients, and entered them in the checklists, and patients whose files were incomplete were excluded from the study. Lastly, the information was analyzed using SPSS 22 software and descriptive statistics (frequency distribution tables and graphs) and inferential statistics (Chi-square test).

The mean age of the studied children was 7.4 ± 4.8 years. Minimum age was 2 and maximum age was 15 years. The most common causes of death in children were: unintentional accidents with 50 cases (59.5%), non-congenital diseases with 17 cases (20.2%), congenital diseases with 14 cases (16.7%), and, finally, intentional incidents with 3 patients (3.6%). Also, 56 (66.7%) of the children lived in rural areas and 28 children (33.3%) lived in urban regions.

The results illustrated that the most common cause of death among children referring to Imam Khomeini Hospital in Jiroft was unintentional accidents, which is preventable and can be reduced to some extent. Therefore, designing interventions and educating parents and children about the prevention of accidents and raising the awareness of parents about the signs and symptoms of diseases seem necessary for reducing child mortality. In addition, measures should be taken to prevent child mortality through cooperation of all relevant organizations.