Infant Mortality Rates in Honduras

The health care system of Honduras has worked hard to reduce infant mortality rates from about 5% in the 1990s to about 2% in 2014. Save the Children reports that the infant mortality rate in Honduras is 19 deaths in every 1000 live births. One of the major causes of infant mortality in Honduras is poverty. According to Save the Children, Honduras has a poverty rate of 17.9%, which implies that a significant number of families are unable to afford healthcare services for their infants. Poor nutrition is another factor that contributes to infant mortality because Honduras is not self-sufficient in the production of food. The insufficient production of food predisposes children to hunger and malnutrition, especially in rural areas, which consequently contribute to relatively high mortality rates. A disease such as HIV/AIDS is prevalent among the population, and thus it causes infant mortality. This means that poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and HIV/AIDS are some of the factors that contribute to infant mortality in Honduras.

Moreover, the inaccessibility of healthcare services to women and children is another factor that augments infant mortality. In rural areas, maternal care is inaccessible and thus makes women not utilize reproductive healthcare services. Owing to the inaccessibility of healthcare services in remote areas, pregnant women do not receive essential prenatal care in time to improve the lives of their babies. Likewise, women do not access antenatal care easily, which means that their babies do not receive immunization services and other therapies in time to avert avoidable infant mortality. According to Price and Asgary, indigenous identity and remote residence contribute to the inaccessibility of healthcare services such as family planning, prenatal care, and antenatal care to women. In this view, poor maternal health consequently leads to poor prenatal and antenatal services, which contribute to infant mortality in Honduras.