Infant Mortality
Infant Mortality
Infant mortality is basically the death of a child that has not attained one year. The population heath and consequently infant mortality of a population in this paper will be the outcomes of a specified group of individuals and the distributions of the results within the group. The groups can be any amalgamation of people including by geographical areas or even ethnicity.
Access to healthcare is the single most determiner of infant mortality of a population. To begin, the infants who are delivered in a hospital have lesser chances of developing complications than those delivered elsewhere. In addition, if the complications arise in a healthcare facility the complication is more easily dealt with than in a locale without trained medical professionals. Medical practices such as vaccines that given to children whose parents or guardians have access to healthcare will minimize infant mortality among the children in a population that the population lacks access to the healthcare.
The individual behavior of an infant is unlikely to be of significant effect on the population’s infant mortality. Nonetheless, the individual behaviors of the parents might contribute to the mortality rate of populations. An example would be alcohol and drug consumption. Such a population with a large number of such parents will observe a higher rate of infant mortality than a population that lacks such behaviors.
The social environment of a population is also a minor determinant of the infant mortality rate. The actual effect and the differences have yet to be fully established, but the correlation has been shown that cohesive and harmonious populations have a lower mortality rate than violent and insecure populations. However, this correlation might be affected by other factors such as the violent and unsafe areas are likely to be slums.
The physical environment of a population plays a significant role in the infant mortality of the same population. The population that is in areas such as the aforementioned slums with poor sanitary conditions and no access to adequate health care in regions such as Africa have a significantly higher mortality rate. The high mortality rate is in contrast to the low mortality rate of areas such as the American suburbs. Genetics, on the other hand, is a field that is yet to be fully understood to the extent of stating whether the genetics of the population can affect its infant mortality.
References
Improving Population Health. (2014, August 14). What is Population Health? Retrieved from Improving Population Health: http://www.improvingpopulationhealth.org/blog/what-is-population-health.html
Kindig, A., Asada, Y., & Booske, B. (2008). A population health framework for setting national and state health goals. US National Library of Medicines, 1-35.
MacDorman, & Marian, F. (2014). International Comparisons of Infant Mortality and Related Factors: United States and Europe, 2010. National vital statistics reports: from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System, 1-7.
