Reduction of infant and child mortality is a key development goal. Thus it is an
area that has attracted the attention of policy-makers and program
implementers worldwide.
The World Summit for Children, held in 1990, set forth a package of
objectives to be implemented by the year 2000. Among these objectives was
an aim to reduce infant and under-five mortality by one third, or to 50 and 70
deaths per 1,000 births, respectively, whichever is less. This was reaffirmed at
the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).
The 1996 population policy of Mongolia announced the intention to reduce the
mortality rates of infants and children under five years of age by one third from
the level of 1990 by the period 2010-2015.
To understand infant and child mortality it is important to have a clear
distinction between deaths which occur at different points of time. Mortality
rates presented in this paper are the probability of death prior to a certain age.
For example, the early neonatal and neonatal mortality rates are calculated as
the probability of dying during the first week and month of life, respectively.
The infant mortality rate is the probability of dying before the first birthday.
Child mortality is the probability of dying between the first and fifth birthdays,
while the under-five mortality rate is the probability of dying between birth and
the fifth birthday.
Infant mortality is a customary measure of survival in early life but it excludes
the largest component of reproductive mortality which is stillbirth. Stillbirth is a
death occurring in the 28th-40th week of foetal life.
There remains a clear distinction between the determinants of infant and child
mortality. Infant mortality, and especially neonatal mortality, is conditioned by
the circumstances of childbirth, environmental circumstances of the mother
prior to birth and the influence of breastfeeding while child mortality is mostly
conditioned by environmental factors.