Publication:

Facility based retrospective infant death study in a tertiary care hospital of Tripura

Background Infant and neonatal mortality are important indicators of the overall physical health of a community. An increase is generally indicative of unmet human needs in healthcare, sanitation, nutrition and education.

Objective To estimate the different causes of death along with the geographic distribution of the reported death cases during the study period.

Methods Analysis of the retrospective mortality data of infant and neonates in the Pediatric Department of Agartala Government Medical College and Hospital, from 2014-2018, was conducted.

Results A total of 1525 infant deaths were recorded in the study facility, of which 878 (57.57%) were early-neonates, 120 (7.87%) late neonates and 527 (34.56%) post-neonatal infants. The most reported causes of neonatal mortality in Tripura were found to be preterm/low birth weight and perinatal asphyxia with OR of 1.45 (CI=1.137-1.857) and 1.41 (CI=1.10-1.81) respectively.

Conclusions The increasing burden of preterm births and neonatal sepsis needs attention towards ante-natal care along with holistic healthcare services. The need for intensive actions from both administration and healthcare facility to promote identification of red-flags at primary level, followed by proper referral from the periphery to tertiary care facility has been reiterated in this study.