Geographic Information Systems-Based Analysis of Under Five Mortality in Alexandria

Abstract

For decades, the focus of international public health has been on reducing child mortality. According to the World Health Organization, about 10.5 million children under the age of five years died in the year 2000. The vast majority of these deaths were preventable with current technology. Hence, the under 5 mortality reflects the health status and development of countries

Despite the improvements in the health and well-being of populations globally over the last few decades, several factors persist as major obstacles against improvements of under 5 mortality in many developing countries. However, the development of effective programs to reduce the burden of under 5 mortality requires a detailed knowledge of mortality distribution and the causal pathways.

New approaches are needed to assist in the on-going battle against under

5 mortality. As a tool for helping communities to combat under 5 mortality, GIS allows for the collection, storage, retrieval, analysis and spatial display of under 5 deaths. The ability to visually display the spatial relationships makes GIS a uniquely well suited analytical tool for understanding the under 5 mortality problem.

The aim of this study was to analyze the levels, trend and spatial distribution of under five mortality in Alexandria using GIS in an effort to detect areas of high U5MR and clarify relationships among the various causes of infant and child mortality and sociodemographic and environmental indicators.