A Study for Causes of Death in Korean Children

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: Analyzing of the causes of childhood death will provide us with the basis to understand prevalent diseases and to make the best possible health plan according to the studies. The National Statistical Office (NSO) of Korea has released an annual report of nationwide death. However, it could have underestimated the death toll of children because of delayed or missing reports of infants who died during the neonatal period. The death reports by pediatricians at hospitals could compensate for the dropped number of infantile death reported by the NSO. METHODS: We collected the death records for children under 15 years of age from the 136 secondary or tertiary referral hospitals over the country from January 1 through December 31, 1995. Then we tried to make a compilation of the records from both the NSO and our committee to finalize the cause of death. RESULTS: According to the records of the 136 hospitals, the total number of childhood death was 3,900 in 1995, including 1,790 deaths in the first 28 days of life. Most deaths occurred in the hospital (89.0%), which were confirmed either by a pediatrician (6.2%) or by a pediatric resident (58.8%). We were compiling 6,735 deaths according to the NSO and 3,415 of our own, with 846 overlaps. Seventeen deaths recorded by the NSO occurred in the first 6 days of life, compared to 1,292 from our own. After the first year, 4,762 deaths recorded by the NSO and 790 of ours were observed. CONCLUSION: The death records from hospitals could be enough to compensate for the dropped number of neonatal deaths recorded by the NSO, depicting more accurately the real pattern of death for Korean children in 1995.