Abstract:
Background: Perinatal mortality is a death of fetuses after 28weeks of gestation or more if
gestational age is not known, weight of ≥1000gm and death of live newborn before the age of 7
days. Perinatal mortality rate is taken as one of the indicators of the health status of a given
society. It is multifactorial in etiology and depends on the quality of health care provided to the
pregnant women and their babies.
Objective:To assess the prevalence of perinatal mortality & associated factors among mothers
who gave birth at Arba Minch General Hospital, Southern Ethiopia.
Methods:A facility based retrospective cross sectional study design was conducted in Arba
Minch General Hospital. A structured checklist was used to collect data through record review of
all women who gave birth at the hospital within the past one year preceding the survey. Simple
random sampling was used to select study participants from delivery log book using medical
record number of the mother. Then Epi-info version 7.0 and SPSS Version 21 were used for data
entry and analysis respectively. Descriptive statistics and bivariate analyses were computed. And
also crude and adjusted odds ratio with 95% confidence interval was considered in the
multivariable logistic regression. The statistical significant variables were declared at p-value <
or equal to 0.05.
Results:Among the 378 study participants who gave birth at Arba Minch general hospital,
28(7.4%) of them had a dead perinatal outcome. The variables such as: having history of
antenatal care visit [(AOR=7.48, 95% CI (2.04, 27.50)], preterm deliveries[(AOR=11.8, 95%CI
(3.09, 44.99)], prolongedlabor[(AOR=11.12, 95%CI(2.32, 53.31)], premature rupture
membrane[(AOR=9.32, 95%CI (2.08, 41.78)], preeclampsia[(AOR=13.43, 95%CI (2.54, 70.78)]
antepartum hemorrhage[(AOR=42.51, 95%CI (7.66, 235.94)] andcord prolapse[(AOR=19.06,
95%CI (2.07, 175.01)]were factors associated with perinatal death.
Conclusion: In general perinatal mortality inArba Minch General Hospital is slightly high which
needs attention. Therefore, the main contributing factors for perinatal death are avoidable with
regular antenatal care visit, early referral system, intra partum and postpartum care, andearly
diagnosis of pregnancy complications and management during follow up anddelivery.
