title: Repeated neonatal deaths in families with special reference to causes of death.
abstract: It is recognized that one infant death in a family indicates an increased risk of death of a subsequent sibling. This study examines which cause of death of a sibling is related to the mortality of the younger sibling and when. Longitudinal vital events data from the maternal and child health and family planning (MCH-FP) project and the comparison areas in Matlab, Bangladesh, were used. Primary causes of 868 neonatal deaths and 624 post-neonatal deaths resulting from 18,865 singleton live births in 1989-92 and those (967 as neonates and 708 as post-neonates) of their immediate elder siblings were categorised into infectious and non-infectious diseases. Multinomial logistic regression was used to estimate the risk of younger siblings dying in each age period from infectious and non-infectious diseases given the age and cause of deaths of older siblings and controlling for other biosocial correlates of infant mortality. A neonatal death of non-infectious causes in a family was twice as likely to be followed by another one occurring at the same age from similar causes compared with a surviving infant followed by a neonatal death from non-infectious causes. The MCH-FP project, though successful in reducing the risk of neonatal and post-neonatal mortality from infectious diseases, did not reduce the risk of dying from non-infectious diseases.
authors.affiliation: Health and Demographic Surveillance Programme, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Alam
authors.forename: J K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: van Ginneken
mesh_terms: D001459:Bangladesh / Q000453:epidemiology; D002423:Cause of Death; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000401:mortality; D005260:Female; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007226:Infant Mortality; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D009026:Mortality; D009679:Nuclear Family; D009748:Nutrition Disorders / Q000401:mortality; D016017:Odds Ratio; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors