Audit of Childhood Mortality in Federal Teaching Hospital Abakaliki, Ebonyi state, Nigeria

Abstract

Background: As much as 10 million children die annually from easily preventable causes especially in resource poor countries of sub Saharan Africa. In2016, Nigeria had an U5MR of 104/1,000 live births despite the childhood survival strategies and policies in the past 2 decades.

Aim: The aim of this study was to audit the pattern and causes of mortality in children seen at Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki (FETHA).

Methods: This was a retrospective cross-sectional study conducted at the Paediatric ward of FETHA over a five year period from January 2013 to December 2017.
Case files of all children aged one month to 18 years who died during admission into the paediatric ward were retrieved from the hospital's medical record department and reviewed. Data collected were entered into the data editor of SPSS software package version 20 (IBM SPSS).Descriptive statistics was used to determine the frequency of cause-specific deaths. Results were presented as percentages, proportions in charts and tables.

Results:A total of 2,911 children were admitted into the paediatric ward within the study period. Of this number, 126 died giving a mortality rate of 4.3% and a male: female ratio of 1.29:1.00. Majority (79.3%) of the mortality occurred in the under-five children with over 80% presenting with fever and approximately 72% hospitalised for over 48hours. Sepsis and malaria were commonest causes of death.

Conclusion: Mortality rate was high in this study especially among the under-5 children and sepsis and malaria were the commonest causes.