Abbreviated Name:
Neonatal mortality
Indicator Name:
Neonatal mortality
Domain:
Health status / Life expectancy and mortality
Related Terms:
Mortality by age and sex, live birth, neonatal period
Definition:
Number of deaths during the first 28 completed days of life per 1000 live births in a given year or other period. May be subdivided into early neonatal deaths, occurring during the first 7 days of life, and late neonatal deaths, occurring after the 7th day but before the 28th completed day of life. Probability that a child born in a specific year or period will die during the first 28 completed days of life if subject to age-specific mortality rates of that period, expressed per 1000 live births.
Measurment Method:
Data from civil registration: The number of live births and the number of neonatal deaths are used to calculate age-specific rates. This system provides annual data. Data from household surveys: Calculations are based on full birth history, whereby women are asked for the date of birth of each of their children, whether the child is still alive, and if not the age at death. With household survey sources there are problems of wide confidence intervals when levels of neonatal mortality are low and inability to use household surveys for administrative sub-regions.
Numerator:
Number of children who died during the first 28 days of life
Denominator
Number of live births (years of exposure)
Estimation method:
To ensure consistency with mortality rates in children younger than 5 years (U5MR) produced by the UN-IGME and to account for variation in survey-to-survey measurement errors, country data points for U5MR and the neonatal mortality rate (NNMR) were rescaled for all years to match the latest time series estimates of U5MR produced by the UN-IGME. This rescaling assumes that the proportionate measurement error in NNMR and U5MR is equal for each data point. The following multilevel statistical model was then applied to estimate NNMRs: log (NNMR/1000) = α0+ β1*log(U5MR/1000) + β2*([log(U5MR/1000)]2) with random effects parameters for both level and trend regression parameters, and random effects parameters influenced by country itself. For countries with high quality civil registration data for neonatal deaths, defined as i) 100% complete for adults and only civil registration data is used for child mortality; ii) population greater than 800,000; iii) and with at least 3 civil registration data points for all the following calendar windows 1990-1994, 1995-1999, 2000-2004, 2005 onwards, we used the same basic equation, but with random effects parameters for both level and trend regression parameters, and random effects parameters influenced by country itself.
Disaggregation:
Age in days/weeks, birth weight, place of residence, sex, socioeconomic status
Primary data sources:
Civil registration with high coverage
Alternate data sources:
Household surveys, population census
Measurment frequency:
Annual, if based on registration system; otherwise, less frequent (3−5 years based on surveys)