Mortality Causes and its Effective Factors in Infants of Birjand

Introduction: First year of life is important as health and improvement of the life quality. In recent years IMR has been decreased in our country but still is higher than the developed countries, which should be dressed with defecting of indicators related to infant mortality, and deciding strategies. Methods: In our study data was collected in a questionnaire for 2004 -2005 year dead infant in Birjand hospitals. This study was a case– control for each case, two controls, who matched one to one considering variable of residency and age, were chosen. Results: 79.7 percent of infant mortality was in neonatal period. The most important causes of death in neonatal were prematurity and low birth weight (54.3%) and in post neonatal period were congenital abnormality (33.3%). In this study logistics regression analysis showed that few variables such as father,s education, history of prior death child, interval between two births, high risk mother,s in pregnancy, type of delivery, gestational age and weight of birth had the significant relationship with infant mortality. Prematurely and low birth weight was highly associated with mortality. Conclusion: Special care for premature and low birth weight infant and strengthening health care programs and emphasizing the need to identify high risk groups should be priorities