The drivers of child mortality during the 2012-2016 drought in La Guajira, Colombia

Contreras Mojica, Diana, Voets, Alex, Junghardt, Jana, Bhamidipati, Srirama and Contreras, Sandra 2020. The drivers of child mortality during the 2012-2016 drought in La Guajira, Colombia. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 11 (1) , pp. 87-104. 10.1007/s13753-020-00255-0

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Abstract

During the 2012–2016 drought in La Guajira, Colombia, child mortality rates rose to 23.4 out of 1000. Most of these children belonged to the Wayuu indigenous community, the largest and one of the most vulnerable in Colombia. At the municipal level, this study found a significant positive correlation between the average child mortality rate and households with a monthly income of less than USD 100, the number of people without access to health insurance, being part of the indigenous population, being illiterate, lacking sewage systems, living in rural areas, and large households with members younger than 5 years old and older than 65 years old. No correlation was found with households without access to a water source. The stepwise regression analysis showed that households with a monthly income of less than USD 100, no members older than 65 years old, but several children younger than 5 years old, account for 90.4% of the child mortality rate. This study concludes that, if inhabitants had had better incomes or assets, as well as an adequate infrastructure, they could have faced the drought without the observed increase in child mortality.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Earth and Environmental Sciences
Additional Information:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
Publisher:	SpringerOpen / Springer Verlag (Germany)
ISSN:	2095-0055
Funders:	Caritas Switzerland
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	28 July 2021
Date of Acceptance:	19 February 2020
Last Modified:	05 May 2023 10:50
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/142967

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