Infant Mortality: Analysis of the Social Area and Redirection of Health Systems Towards Equity

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Beyond the impact of implementing public health actions focused on mother-and-child health, there are doubts about whether they actually meet the different levels of need within and across population. This poses the need to work on some criteria based on the population's socio-demographic features according to a social area. That social area, built by human groups, articulates with the economic framework of production processes. This opens a new approach to health problems. OBJECTIVE: to analyze health status in the 14 social areas in the city of Cordoba, Argentina. Its purpose is to direct health systems towards equity by means of an efficient use of resources. METHODOLOGY: This geo-socially referring survey analyzes the infant mortality rate and its links with poverty -as indicated by the percentage of population with unsatisfied basic needs (UBN)- and the offer of health services. Information from each social area was obtained from the government office of Preventive Medicine (Municipality of Córdoba), and was stored in a specially designed database. Statistical analyses were performed by the Public Health Statistics Program EpiInfo 6. RESULTS: The results achieved show that poverty level was 15.6% in the whole city, varying from 0% to 25% in the different social areas. Infant mortality rate in Cordoba was 15.90/00 presenting wide variations within each social area. Nevertheless, mortality rates did not significantly correlate either with the different levels of poverty or with the offer of health services. Evenmore, social areas with a similar percent of population with UBN (17.6% and 18.6%) showed quite different infant mortality rates (31.70/00 and 180/00). On the other hand, social areas with extreme poverty level values (0% and 25% of population with UBN) showed similar infant mortality rates (18 0/00 and 17.6 0/00). CONCLUSION: Although our results are preliminary and need a further investigation involving other health-related aspects, such as social capital, they will allow to redirect local policies: “know-how”, “what-to-do” and especially “where-to-do”.