Abstract

Background Infant mortality rate is an important index of community health status and mortality rate. It is also one of the most prominent indexes showing the development of various societies. Regarding the importance of infant mortality rate (IMR), the purpose of current study was to compare and trend analysis of IMR in different areas of the WHO during 1990-2017. In current ecological study, IMR per 1000 live births in different WHO regions from 1990 to 2017 data were derived from the WHO website. The required information included the data about IMR per 1000 live births in different WHO regions from 1990 to 2017. The analysis was performed by using descriptive and analytical methods. Results The IMR during the study period had a significant decreasing trend in all the regions (p < 0.001) but the slope of decrease was greater in Africa than in other regions. The African and European regions had the highest (55.7) and lowest (17.2) annual decrease in the infant mortality rate (from 106.3 cases in 1990 to 50.6 in 2017, and from 24.9 in 1990 to 7.7 in 2017), respectively. Conclusion Our results showed that the trend of IMR had a decreasing trend in all WHO regions. It can be due to improving the public health situation in different areas. But the identification of effective factors on IMR needs individuals based studies.