Final Report (PDF, 2132K) - Measure DHS

the ODHS are well in excess of 0.25, indicating that gross underreporting of babies who died in earlyinfancy is not a problem:BothMales Females Sexes0.73 0.64 .70Age at death misreporting can result in a net transfer of events between infancy and earlychildhood and can bias mortality estimates. The possibility of such misreporting was investigated bylooking for heaping of deaths at 12 months in the distribution of deaths by age. The dis~bution is asfollows:Deaths bv Age During 1981-86Age inBothMonths Males Females Sexes6 10 10 207 4 3 78 5 4 99 4 9 1310 1 5 611 3 4 712 6 5 1113 3 1 414 1 1 215 4 2 616 2 0 217 0 1 118 8 9 17There is some indication of heaping of deaths at 12 months of age (11 deaths at 12 months versus7 at 11 months and 4 at 13 months) but it is not significant relative to the total of 214 infant deathsreported for the 1981-86 period.Mortality Levels 1981-1986Table 6.1 displays infant and child mortality rates for Ondo State for the period 1981-1986. ForOndo State, the infant mortality rate is 56 deaths per 1,000 live births and the child mortality rate is aboutthe same, 55 per 1,000. The overall probability of dying between birth and age five is 108 per 1,000 (i.e.,about one in every ten children dies before reaching five years of age). Sex-specific rates are similar inmagnitude with male rates being higher than female rates -- a differential found in most populations. Therates by area of residence indicate somewhat lower infant and child mortality in urban areas (54 and 49per 1,000, respectively) than in rural areas (57 and 61 per 1,000, respectively). These differences are notgreat and may be due to sampling variance. The rates for riverine areas are, on the other hand, decidedlyhigher for infants (70 per 1,1300) hut lower for children age 1-4 (38 per 1,000). However, these rates arebased on fewer than 500 person-years of exposure and should be viewed with caution.54