What has Iran achieved in under-five mortality in terms of equity and efficiency in the past decades?

Abstract

Iran has made remarkable progress in reducing child mortality over the past few decades. However, this promising profile is mainly average driven, and inequalities are not counted in judgments about the progress. In the present study, we used an achievement index approach to combine average and inequalities to provide a better picture of Iran's achievement in under-five mortality over the last two decades. The study had a cross-sectional design. Data gathered in the two recent national demographic health surveys (DHSs) in 2000 and 2010 were used to conduct the analyses. Accordingly, 45,646 live births covered by DHS 2000 and 10,604 live births covered by DHS 2010 were investigated. An achievement index was constructed by incorporating some extensions to the concentration index, namely by incorporation of the average into the index. The standard concentration index showed that under-five mortality was unequally distributed, hurting the poor, across all provinces and Iran overall in 2000 (concentration index=-0.1311 [standard error {SE}=0.0139]) and 2010 (-0.1367 [SE=0.0381]). The achievement index revealed that Iran has had achievements in under-five mortality (relative change in the mean has decreased from 29.5% to 25.8%), but the achievement was mostly due to reductions in the average mortality and not in its unequal distribution. The same result applied to a considerable number of provinces, and only a few have made achievements in both inequality and average. Considering the lack of progress in the reduction of inequalities in under-five mortality over the past decades, equity-oriented policies should be of prime importance for Iran's healthcare system.