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Abstract
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OBJECTIVES: The target of fourth Millennium Development Goal (MDG-4) is effort to reduce the rate of under-five mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. Despite substantial progress towards achieving the target of MDG-4 in Iran at the national level, differences at the sub-national levels should be taken into consideration.
METHODS: The under-five mortality data available in deputy of public health, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, was used in order to perform a time series analysis on monthly under-five mortality rate (U5MR) during 2005 to 2012 in Kermanshah province, the west of Iran. After primary analysis, a seasonal auto-regressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) model was chosen as the best fitting model based on model selection criteria.
RESULTS: The model was assessed and proved to be adequate in describing variations in the data. However, unexpected presence of a stochastic increasing trend and a seasonal component with periodicity of six months in the fitted model are very likely to be a consequence of poor quality of data collection and reporting systems.
CONCLUSIONS: The present work is the first attempt in time series modeling of U5MR in Iran, which reveals that improvement of under-five mortality data collection in health facilities and their corresponding systems is a major challenge ahead in fully achieving MGD-4 in Iran. Studies similar to the present work can enhance the understanding of the invisible patterns in U5MR, monitor progress towards MGD-4 and predict the impact of future variations in U5MR. [SafetyLit note: The incidence of injury mortality is not presented separately from all-cause mortality for this age group.]
Language: en |