Global Rates of Neonatal Mortality and the Contributing Factors

Ahmad Haj-Assaad

Neonatal mortality remains the greatest death rate globally in children below the age of 5. Despite efforts to increase maternal healthcare as well as childhood immunization, neonatal mortality causes remain unchanged throughout the years. It seems based on anecdotal evidence that these causes may differ from region to region. Thus, we will perform a systematic review of the literature on neonatal global mortality spanning the last 10 years to assess the most common cause of death per WHO region, as well as per country GDP income level. The subsequent data will be used for additional analysis to shed some light on this ongoing problem and hopefully, provide global aid organizations with better focal points to exert their efforts.

From the data collected, a comprehensive analysis will be done to note the risk factors of the main causes of neonatal mortality in the regions. Any correlation between the main causes of neonatal mortality in each WHO region can be used to analyze common risk factors they share between each other. Alongside with risk factors, every region offers different indirect factors like GDP income, numbers of doctors per population, the average distance of hospitals, education level of women, etc. We hope to find any correlations between risk factors and indirect factors on the main contributing causes of neonatal mortality in each WHO region. These correlations may further provide which risk factors and/or other data may have a higher contribution association with a certain cause of death.