Under-five Mortality: Comparative Study of Kenya and other three East-african Developing Countries

Abstract

Background An indicator called the under-five mortality rate makes it possible to compare deaths in several locations and groups of children of various sizes at once. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) still has a high under-five mortality rate that needs to be addressed before modifiable causes can be completely recognized. Objective The study investigates the stark disparity in mortality rates for children under five between Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. Methods The study assessed secondary data from the World Bank repository covering four East African nation's period from 1990 to 2019. Kruskal-Wallis One-way ANOVA was used in the study as a method of data analysis. Therefore, A significance threshold of 0.05 is therefore, considered for the statistical tests in this investigation, and the statistical software used is R. Results The findings showed that the under-five mortality rates of the four nations under consideration differed significantly (p<0.05). The median under-five mortality for the country Kenya was 82 compared to 117 in Rwanda, Uganda was 113, while for Tanzania was 97. According to a Wilcoxon signed rank pairwise tests, there is a significant difference in under-five mortality between Kenya and Uganda. Conclusion Kenya has the lowest average under-five mortality rate (79.00 ± 26.40), while Rwanda has the highest average rate (123.53 ± 72.93). Within the review period, the average mortality rate in Rwanda was 40 higher than the average in Kenya and more than 20 more than the average for Tanzania's under-five mortality rate.