Abstract

Problem statement: Death of children under the age of five is one of the important health indicators. Identifying the causes of child deaths can be very helpful in identifying and preventing thesimilar causes of death. Therefore, this study was designed at the Forensic Medicine Organization of Iran to investigate and prevent the death of children. Method of the study: The study was a retrospective descriptive study and the research variables from the files of died children under the age of referred to the forensic medical examination hall of Golestan, Mazandaran, Guilan provinces in 2012-2013 were entered into the checklist, coded and was analyzed using Spss software. Findings: 218 died children under the age of 5 including 88 girls and 130 boys were referred to forensic medicine centers in Golestan, Mazandaran and Guilan over two years. The most common causes of death were accidental driving (32.6%), death with unknown reason (16.5%), natural cause (12.4%), and the most common causes of skull fracture and intracranial hemorrhage (27.5%), unknown (17%), asphyxiation (15.1%). Death often occurred in the age range of 2-5 years (39.4%). Results: The most common type of death was traffic accidents (32.6%) that was not unexpected due to the tourist's availability of the three northern provinces of the country and its location on the route of the pilgrimage province of Khorasan Razavi. No cases of sexual abuse have been reported, which could be due to corruption, inadequate examination, and a judicial order to the issuance of a burial license and non-autopsy. Since the most common form of death was driving accidents so skull fracture and intracranial hemorrhage was announced as the most common cause of death.