A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF INFANT MORTALITY RATE IN ABIA STATE: A CASE STUDY OF FEDERAL MEDICAL CENTRE UMUAHIA

INTRODUCTION: The federal government has made significant progress in the following fields since Nigeria gained independence in 1960: agriculture, education, industries, health services, banking, among others. The government has worked to guarantee that everyone, especially women and children, has access to high-quality health services. The building of several public health institutes across the states is tangible proof of her efforts. Hospitals, health centers, clinics, maternity homes, and mobile clinics are a few examples of these. There has been an increase in public awareness of health issues recently, which has led to better organization, increased public health awareness, and changes in medical practices, among other things. However, these advancements may seem small in comparison to the scope of the issues still unresolved, particularly when it comes to infant diseases and infant mortality (Usman Sulaiman & Abubakar 2019). Mortal, according to the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, refers to something that will eventually pass away. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the state of being mortal is the temporary nature of life, or the inability to live eternally.

The world population has been growing in recent decades, and a stable or declining population would be considered abnormal. "Modern term of recent origin originated from the time of 1600; the increase is quite unique in any similar period," according to Berkley (1958), cited in Akpanta, Okorie, and Okoye (2015). The aforementioned remark demonstrates how ephemeral such population fluctuations are. Although health records in West African nations did not begin until the entrance of conventional medicine, it was known there before the white men did. Infant mortality was high due to the increased occurrence of fatal illnesses that harmed pregnant women's and newborns' health. Aside from the fact that our local population's hygiene, eating habits, and general health may use improvement, a lack of health infrastructure also contributed to the area's high infant death rate.

Again, Nwafor, Abali, and Nnolim (2017) demonstrated that other causes of infant mortality include well-known killer diseases of childhood, such as measles, malaria, small pox, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis, poliomyelitis, dyphytaria, and jaundice. The Nigerian government made significant contributions to the enhancement of newborn health in the late 1980s through the National Immunization Program and the Expanded Immunization Program. However currently The black fly-caused onchosochaisis epidemic is no longer present, according to current health journals "Health care," and the liming legs are rapidly going extinct.  With the help of the three-month immunization campaign from the year 2000, poliomyelitis is slated to be eradicated from the borders of our nation.