Infant mortality in Kyrgyzstan before and after the break-up of the Soviet Union

There is a great deal of uncertainty over the levels of, and trends in, infant mortality in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. As a result, the impact of the break-up of the Soviet Union on infant mortality in the region is not known, and proper monitoring of mortality levels is impaired....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Population studies 2013-11, Vol.67 (3), p.335-352
Main Authors: Guillot, Michel, Lim, So-jung, Torgasheva, Liudmila, Denisenko, Mikhail
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age
Censuses
Central Asia
Child health
Civil registration
data quality
Death
Demography
Ethnicity
former Soviet Union
Health
Health policy
Health services
Humans
indirect estimation techniques
Infant
Infant Mortality
Infant Mortality - trends
Infants
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan - epidemiology
Life Expectancy - trends
Live births
Mortality
Mortality Rates
Place of residence
Postcommunist Societies
Risk
Risk factors
Rural Areas
Trends
U.S.S.R
USSR
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Summary:There is a great deal of uncertainty over the levels of, and trends in, infant mortality in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. As a result, the impact of the break-up of the Soviet Union on infant mortality in the region is not known, and proper monitoring of mortality levels is impaired. In this paper, a variety of data sources and methods are used to assess levels of infant mortality and their trend over time in one Central Asian republic, Kyrgyzstan, between 1980 and 2010. An abrupt halt to an already established decline in infant mortality was observed to occur during the decade following the break-up of the Soviet Union, contradicting the official statistics based on vital registration. Infants of Central Asian ethnicity and those born in rural areas were also considerably more at risk of mortality than suggested by the official sources. We discuss the implications of these findings, both for health policy in this seldom studied part of the former Soviet Union and for our understanding of the health crisis which it currently faces.
ISSN:0032-4728
1477-4747
DOI:10.1080/00324728.2013.835859