Abstract:

Background: Mortality is one of the most important measures of population health, as its oftenly used as a health indicator and a valuable tool for planning and management in hospitals (1). Child mortality as an indicator, has been increasing for the current years in Tanzania. Though the progress made by millennium development goal (MDG’S) and sustainable development goals (SDG’S) as global interventions to promote health and wellbeing to reduce the child mortality to an overall non recognizable number.

Objective: This study aims to gain insight on the magnitude of mortality among underfive, common causes and their predictors. Information obtained from this study will be useful in evaluating the mortality by the hospital and district health authorities and use these data to set out strategies to optimize survival of children attending at the hospital.

Methodology: it was a descriptive cross-sectional hospital based retrospective study. Data was extracted from the patient’s medical records where systematic sampling was done. The patient’s medical records were picked randomly at fixed specific intervals and then reviewed. Data was documented in the data collection tool.

Results: 248 reported death of children under five year old occurred between 1st and December 31st 2019 were enrolled. 134 (54%) were male, 228 (92%) presented with generalized body weakness, 191/248 (77%) presented were fever. 133/248 (53.9%) deaths were attributed to malaria, 53 (21.4%) death were severe pneumonia.

Conclusion: These results confirm that most causes of death in children under five years old are preventable. Need strengthening case management at primary health care.