Objectives: The target of fourth Millennium Development Goal (MDG-4) is effort to reduce the rate of
under-five mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. Despite substantial progress towards achieving
the target of MDG-4 in Iran at the national level, differences at the sub-national levels should be taken into
consideration.
Methods: The under-five mortality data available in deputy of public health, Kermanshah University of
Medical Sciences, was used in order to perform a time series analysis on monthly under-five mortality rate
(U5MR) during 2005 to 2012 in Kermanshah province, the west of Iran. After primary analysis, a seasonal
auto-regressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) model was chosen as the best fitting model based on
model selection criteria.
Results: The model was assessed and proved to be adequate in describing variations in the data. However,
unexpected presence of a stochastic increasing trend and a seasonal component with periodicity of six
months in the fitted model are very likely to be a consequence of poor quality of data collection and
reporting systems.
Conclusions: The present work is the first attempt in time series modeling of U5MR in Iran, which reveals
that improvement of under-five mortality data collection in health facilities and their corresponding systems
is a major challenge ahead in fully achieving MGD-4 in Iran. Studies similar to the present work can enhance
the understanding of the invisible patterns in U5MR, monitor progress towards MGD-4 and predict the
impact of future variations in U5MR.