Citation

Giashuddin SM, Rahman A, Rahman F, Rahman Mashrekey S, Mahmud Chowdhury S, Linnan MJ, Safinaz S. Int. J. Equity Health 2009; 8(1): 7.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group - BMC)

DOI

10.1186/1475-9276-8-7

PMID

19309516

PMCID

PMC2676296

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Child injury is an emerging public health issue in both developed and developing countries. It is the main cause of deaths and disabilities of children after infancy. The aim of this study was to investigate the socioeconomic inequality in injury related morbidity and mortality among 1- 4 years children. Methods and Materials: Data used for this study derived from Bangladesh Health and Injury Survey. A multistage cluster sampling technique was conducted for this survey. In this study quintiles of socioeconomic status were calculated on the basis of assets and wealth score by using principle component analysis. The numerical measures of inequality in mortality and morbidity were assessed by the concentration index. RESULTS: The poorest-richest quintile ratio of mortality due to injury was 6.0 whereas this ratio was 5.6 and 5.5 for the infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases. The values of mortality concentration indices for the child mortality due to infection, non-communicable diseases and injury causes were -0.40, -0.32 and -0.26 respectively. Among the morbidity concentration indices, injury showed the significantly greater inequality. All the concentration indices revealed that there were significant inequalities among the groups. The logistic regression analysis indicated that poor children had 2.8 times more likelihood to suffer from injury mortality than rich children, taking into account all the other factors. CONCLUSION: Despite concentration indices used in this study, the analysis reflected the family's socioeconomic position in Bangladesh context, showing a very strong statistical association with child mortality. Due to existing socioeconomic situation in Bangladesh, the poor children were more vulnerable to injury occurrence.

Language: en