Abstract:
Sierra Leone is among the countries that recorded high under-five child mortality rate in the world. To design and
implement policies that can address this public health challenge, the present study developed a predictive model
of factors that explained under-five mortality in Sierra Leone using the 2008 and 2013 Sierra Leone Demographic
and Health Survey (SDHS) datasets. LASSO regression technique was used to select the predictors to build the
under-five predictive single-level logit and multilevel logit models. Statistical analyses were performed in the R
freeware version 3.6.1. About 588 (10.4%) and 1320 (11.1%) children under five were reported dead in 2008 and
2013, respectively. The significant predictors of under-five mortality in Sierra Leone were the total number of
children ever born, number of children under five in the household, mother's birth in the last five years, mother's
number of living children, and number of household members, household wealth, maternal contraceptive use and
intention, number of eligible women in the household, type of toilet facility, sex of the child, and weight of the
child at birth. The study identified certain predictors that deserve policy attention and interventions to strengthen
the efforts of creating child welfare and survival atmosphere in Sierra Leone.
