The Child Health Scenario in India: An Application of Bayesian Approach
Pages 359-366
Atanu Bhattacharjee, Dilip C. Nath and Dibyojyoti Bhattacharjee

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.6000/1929-4247.2013.02.04.9

Published: 25 November 2013

Abstract: Background: The child mortality rate of a place is an indication of the basic health facility prevalent there. A place with better medical facility records low child mortality. The child mortality rate reduction is not as expected in many developing countries. In last two decades the child death rate has not been reduced significantly in India. The aim of this work is to explore the child death rate in different Indian states.

Materials and Methods:The Bayesian approach has been applied to control the over dispersion due to presence of zero (i.e. no-death count) in the data set. The Zero Inflated Poisson (ZIP) has been applied to control the presence of over the Zero Inflation Distribution. The data set has been considered from Indian National Health and Family Survey (NFHS-3) conducted during 2005-2006. The women having at least one living child of age less than five years has been selected as study subjects.

Results:The state of Goa has attained the best position recording the lowest child death rate (0.03) and followed by Kerala (0.08). The Arunachal Pradesh (0.75) has attained the last rank among all states in India. In case of child death for women who have at least one living male children Tamilnadu has the lowest child death.

Conclusion:In India it has been observed that married couples accept family planning only after having sufficient number of children. This is mainly because as the child mortality rate is higher so only few of their children would survive to adulthood. Reduction in infant mortality over time and the awareness of such improvements among the people in the community may ultimately lead to lesser number of children per couple due to the removal of the fear of death to their children. It is, therefore, necessary, from the policy point of view, to estimate the actual levels of child mortality of an area under study at different period of time. Attempt shall also be made to explore the extent of changes in the levels of child mortality and its causes over time.