BIBLIOGRAPHIC INPUT SHEET TEMPORARY Patterns of mortality ...

70 Patterns of Mortality in Childhood
heavily to the high death rates for the
country.
Problems in relation to registration of
deaths were uncovered in tile Investigation.
In fact, 20.2 per cent of the deaths found in
Cartagena had not been registered.
In spite of the recovery of non-rgistercd
deaths in the Investigation, the official
infant death rates for all three cities in
1967 were higher than those found in the
Investigation, as shown below:
Official
1967 Investigation
Cali 71.6 54.6
Cartagena 55.4 47.8
Medellin 63.2 47.6
These differences may be due to a decline
in infant mortality, or else the official data
may include deaths of non-residents from
rural and other areas, and there may be
subregistration of births. The three projects
in Colombia wNere restricted to the
urban arets of the three cities. Estimates
of births (the bases for infant death rates)
were necessary since such data were not
available by residence.
The underregistration uncovered in these
cities indicates the need for improvement of
procedures in hospitals as well as in civil
registration offices in Colombia.
El Salvador
The infant death rates found in the Investigation
in the city of San Salvador and
in the rural municipios (Table 26) were
much higher than the rate for the country.
The rate of 120.0 per 1,000 live births for
the rural inunicipios was 47 per cent higher
than that for San Salvador (81.7), which
in turn was 29 per cent higher than the rate
for the country in 1969 (63.4). The rural
miunicipios (Apopa, Nejapa, and Quezalte-
TABLE 26. Death Rates Under 5 Years by Age
Group in Two Areas of the Investigation in El
Salvador, and Official Rate for El Salvador.
Under Under 1-4
Area 5 yeas year years
Investigation
San Salvador ............ 20.4 81.7 8.0
Rural munlciplos......... 50.5 120.0 20.2
ofcial data. 1000
El Salvador .............. 24.4 63.4 13.2
I
-Deaths under I year per 1,000 live births; others per
1,.000population.
peque) are close to the city of San Salvador
and do not represent the rural populations
of the country since they have access to the
facilities available in the capital city.
Therefore, mortality in rural El Salvador
may be much higher.
The problem of registration of deaths
(especially those in early life) as uncovered
in the Investigation probably occurs
throughout the country. In the last three
years an increase was noted in official infant
death rates for El Salvador, as given below,
which may be due to improvements in
registration:
1968 59.2
1969 63.4
1970 66.6
Nevertheless, infant mortality in the
country as a whole must be much higher
since San Salvador, the largest city, was
found to have a rate of 81.7 per 1,000 live
births.
Jamaica
The infant death rate of 38.8 per 1,000
live births in Kingston-St. Andrew obtained
in the Investigation was higher than the
rate of 34.7 for the country as a whole
(Table 27). Since 10.1 per cent of the
infant deaths found in the Investigation
had not been registered currently, there