Infant Mortality in Zambia

The importance attached to the study and understanding of infant mortality for any country cannot be overestimated. Infant mortality rate is a sensitive index of socio-economic conditions of a population. It is an excellent indicator of the level and quality of the health delivery system and other infrastructure available to a population; in addition, it gives
insights about the country's general development.In the past decade, Zambia's infant mortality rate was/has been one of the highest not just in the Eastern Region of Africa but Sub-Saharan Africa as well. To this effect, the objective of this study was to measure factors that gave rise to this experience. The cardinal question that
needed answers was why had Zambia experienced one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world?It has been observed in this thesis that infant mortality is influenced by a combination of
factors. Amongst these, socio-economic, demographic and environmental factors stood as major contributors to the rise of infant mortality in the past decade.It was the view in this study that effecting measures that would see the eventual fall of infant
mortality rate needed a holistic approach. Improving one aspect of all the visible variables affecting infant mortality would not effectively reduce infant mortality in Zambia.Improvement of one variable should aim at improving others as well, and for this reason, the general improvement of the economy may have a multiplier effect, meaning, it may warrant,but not necessarily guarantee the reduction in the occurrence of infant mortality.