2023, Vol. 8, Issue 6, Part A

World over Kenya and Uasin Gishu in particular, child mortality remains a challenge as children are expected to live up to adulthood. However, they often fail due to variety of diseases. This work considered child mortality as default and time default to be five years. The study analyses child mortality using survival regression models. Secondary data was obtained from Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. Diseases (Risk Factors) that influenced under-five child mortality were considered as variables of the study. The study began by testing proportional hazard assumption on the data collected relating to child mortality data where it was found that proportional assumption is not violated. Cox Proportional Hazard model (CPHM) was fitted to determine the effects of risk factors on child mortality where factors such as gender, malformation, and dehydration increased child mortality risk while cancer decreased this risk. Factors such as tuberculosis, pneumonia and digestive system depicted an insignificant effect on child mortality when evaluated at 5% significance level. The overall goodness of the model was checked using concordance index and Wald test. Child mortality is a very important aspect of measuring health status of the current population and predicting the health of the future generation. The research project recommends modelling of child mortality using other survival models. The study is significant in higher institution of learning since it broadens the knowledge on the application of survival analysis in modelling child mortality. It provides the background for researchers in high institution of learning who are interested in doing studies on child mortality modelling. The study is also important to the health sector since by knowing the factors making an under-five child to be more prevalent to death will help the government achieve the MDG 4 goals faster by improving on these factors.