DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS, CONTRACEPTION AND INFANT MORTALITY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RURAL AND URBAN AREAS OF GUJRAT

One of the Millennium Development Goals is the reduction of infant and child mortality by two-thirds by 2015. In order to achieve this goal, efforts are concentrated at identifying cost-effective strategies as many international agencies have advocated for more resources to be directed to health sector. The demographic study of the determinants of infant and child mortality will concentrate on the certain factors, which may influence the likelihood of ill health, disease and death in early infancy. The main objective of the study is to compare the factors of infant mortality among rural and urban areas and to measure the impact of residential area on infant mortality also find out the impact of contraception on infant mortality and to know the differentials of infant mortality among rural and urban areas. The study was conducted in Gujrat. Sampling frame of such women was hard to find who have experienced infant mortality so non probability sampling was used in this study and from non probability sampling, purposive and snow ball sampling technique were used to locate the respondents. Sample size of 75 women was taken for this study because such women having experience of infant mortality are not much frequent so low sample size was relied. A well-structured interview schedule was used to collect the data. The study concluded that Access to family planning and reproductive health services along with the use of contraception has significant effect on infant mortality. Because both these are found very low among the women experienced infant mortality.