Time-trends and causes of infant, neonatal and postneonatal mortality in Mexico, 1980-1990.

OBJECTIVE

This article analyzes the time-trends and causes of infant, neonatal, and postneonatal mortality in Mexico during the 1980's.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

Data on infant deaths came from yearly tabulations (1980 to 1990) published by the Mexican government. Time-trends of mortality rates were determined by simple linear regression models. The parallelism test was performed for evaluating similarities in trends in neonatal and postneonatal mortality rates by causes.

RESULTS

During the 1980's, infant mortality rates in Mexico declined from 40.4 to 31.1/1000 (beta = -0.791). Postneonatal mortality rates showed a strong decrease (beta = -0.892), while neonatal mortality rates were almost stationary (beta = 0.089). Significant rate decreases were observed for intestinal infections, Pneumonia and influenza and All other causes while Certain perinatal problems, Congenital defects and Nutritional deficiencies increased. No changes were observed in Acute respiratory infections. The neonatal proportional mortality showed an incremental trend accounting for 37.6% in 1980 and ascending to 48.8% in 1990 of the mortality in the first year of life.

CONCLUSIONS

This analysis indicates that the reduction in infant mortality in Mexico during the 1980's was due to declining postneonatal mortality while neonatal mortality rates remain almost unchanged.