Average life expectancy, maternal mortality rate and infant mortality rate are three important indexes of the residents' health status in a country or a region.

Beijing's infant mortality rate is 3.89% in 2007, decreased by 16.5% from that of the pervious year and far less than the national rate of 15.3%, making it the lowest infant mortality rate as far as  statistics data are concerned this year.

Commonly, according to international practice, the rank order of children's death cause is usually analyzed on the basis of mortality rate of the newborn (0-younger than 1 month), infant (0-younger than 1 year) and children under 5 years respectively. The rank order of their death may vary from the age feature and living environment.

In the year 2007, the first three diseases that cause infant death in Beijing are congenital heart disease, birth asphyxia, and premature low birth weight.

The rank order of death causes of children under 5 years is the same with that of infant, namely congenital heart disease, birth asphyxia, and premature low birth weight. However there is a difference in that children death aged from 1-4 years old caused by accidental injury accounting for 48.2% of the total death rate of 1-4 years old children, the mainly causes are traffic accident, suffocation, felling off and poisoning.

In 2007, 66 children under 5 years died of congenital heart disease in Beijing. Generally speaking, children with serious congenital heart disease would probably die in their infancy (0-younger than 1 year old). However there are two ways to prevent this disease. The first one is an early discovery of the disease which can be made through antenatal care and prenatal diagnosis and accordingly terminate pregnancy; secondly, childcare doctors can be trained to acquire auscultation skill to detect potential congenital heart disease patients during physical examination of children, so that those children can get referral treatment in time. During the passed several years, the establishment of screening and referral network of children with congenital heart disease in Beijing has greatly reduced mortality rate of those children..

In addition, as to birth asphyxia, another major cause of the newborn, focus of prevention should be put on antenatal care and reduction of birth asphyxia incidence. Training of resuscitation of asphyxiated infants has been carried out in the obstetric department of all the hospitals in Beijing to improve ability of rescuing and resuscitating asphyxiated infants to reduce mortality.    

Moreover, the emphasis of prevention of low birth weight infant should also be put on antenatal care publicity and education and prenatal examination, through which pregnant women would know the common sense of self-health care and the importance of getting well nutritionized and giving mature delivery. Doctors who are responsible for children health care should give detailed instruction to pregnant women after their delivering as to what is premature delivery and how to care and feed the low birth weight infant in order to lower morbidity rate and mortality rate of premature infants. 

Most accidental death of children aged from 1 to 4 years old can be avoided. At present, the health departments of Beijing has highlighted the children accidental injury in children health care work and try to enhance children and their parents' awareness of preventing accidental injury through various educational forms of popularizing safety knowledge to them at schools and communities. Meanwhile, we call for worldwide attention to the health and safety of children and create a healthy and safe living environment for them.