class="ltx_title_section">Introduction

Child class="ltx_title_section" id="auto-label-section-732439">Introduction

Child  mortality is considered as an indicator of child health and well being UNICEF 2015. .  Cambodia, a low income country located in South-eastern Asia has recently achieved the Millennium Development Goal for 2015 (MDG 2015), which was to achieve an under 5 years-old-mortality (U5MR) of 39 deaths per 1000 live births UNICEF 2015. births (S_WHO).  Cambodia accomplished an enormous progress during the past decades, going from 117 deaths per 1000 live births in 1990 to 29 in 2015. Rates of Neonatal mortality (number of neonates dying before reaching 28 days of age per 1000 live births) went from 41 in 1990 to 15 in 2015 the_world_bank_mortality_2015. Bank).  However, even if at a country level Cambodia attained the MDG 2015, a recent study showed significant inequalities within the country Jimenez-Soto 2014. al.).  The authors showed that high-income household have a lower rate of under-5 and neonatal mortality. They also pointed out the disparities in terms of U5MR and neonatal mortality between rural and urban areas (especially Phnom Penh).

Studies linking neonatal mortality to other variables have already been done in the past. In 2009, Matsuoka and al, listed perceived barriers to utilization of maternal health service in Cambodia Matsuoka 2010. Cambodia.  By interviewing a sample of reproductive-age women aged 15-49 years in six different communities, they conclude that 5 main barriers were present: “Financial barriers”, “Physical barriers” which includes poor geographic access to clinics, “Cognitive barriers”, “Organisational barriers” and “Psychological and socio-economical barriers”. In 1998, Shireen J. Jejeebhoy revealed a link between wife-beating and fetal and infant death based on a survey in rural India Jejeebhoy 1998 . India.  More recently, Seetha Menon, in her article: “ Unfinished Lives:  The effect of domestic violence on  neonatal and infant  mortality”Menon 2014,  showed a causal relationship between domestic violence and neonatal and infant mortality.

Based on this, this study aim to analyse, by using an exploratory spatial data analysis, the probable linear behaviour between the dependent variable: “Neonatal mortality rate” and other independent variables: “ Household sizes”, “Percentages of households with electricity”, “travel time to the closest health facility” and “total domestic violence” at a district level in Cambodia.