Considered as a health indicator traditionally valorised and recognised, infancy death is still a challenge for the Governments and institutions, both nationally and internationally, which are struggling to reduce those numbers. The causes of infancy death are linked, mainly, to pneumonia and gastro-enteritis pathologies that have a vicious circle that is enhanced and/or disseminated by under-nourishment. Searching for a less biological way and, in fact, more effective and efficient interventions, recent studies are being directed by social-economical factors as indicative of illness and death increase during the first year of life. Social class, mother's educational background, basic sewage system and family's income are some of the variables which can be attributed this differentiated risk. But an instigating question persists: considering families with similar social class, income and educational background, for instance, why some children die still in infancy and others do not? This questioning inspired this article that, from a self-organisation theory, search for a contribution to clarify the complex mechanisms related to death in the first year of life. We suppose that the family's dynamics, understood inside the concept of self-organisation, generates the conditions for increasing the risk of infancy death.
Infant mortality; Families; Children; Risk factors