Abstract:
Background; Birth interval refers to the time interval from one child’s birth date until the next
child’s birth date. Birth intervals are generally low in Ethiopia. A short birth interval is a
universal public health problem resulting in adverse maternal, neonatal and child outcomes. As
far as my knowledge, there is no study done in Dessie city administration about determinants of
short birth interval.
Objective: This study assessed the determinants of short birth interval among ever married
reproductive age mothers who live in Dessie city administration ,Ethiopia, March 08-25,2019.
Methods and materials; community -based unmatched case-control study was employed on
218 cases, and 436 controls. Ever married reproductive age women who have at least two
consecutive live births with birth interval of less than 3 years between the latest two successive
live births and whose last delivery has been within the past five years prior to the survey as a
case and those women with birth interval of 3–5 years as a control. A multistage sampling
technique was employed on 30% of kebeles in Dessie city administration. Structured interviewer
administered pre-tested questionnaire was used to collect data by trained 16 diploma nurses
supervised by other 4 BSc nurses. The collected data was entered into Epi data 4.2 and analysis
with SPSS version 22.Binary logistic regression with 95% Confidence interval at p<0.05 was
used. Multi-collinearity was checked by standard error and Hosmer-Lemeshow’s test (p=0.75)
was used to check model fitness.
Result: In this study, that contraceptive use(AOR: 11.2, 95% CI (5.95-21.151)) ,breast fed
duration(AOR=0.098, 95% CI (0.047-0.208)) ,age at first birth (AOR: 0.46, 95% CI (0.282-
0.761)) , preceding child sex(AOR= 0.36, 95% CI (0.166-0.793))and correctly know duration of
optimum birth interval (AOR=0.45, 95% CI (0.245-0.811)) were independent determinants of
short inter birth interval.
Conclusion and recommendations: contraceptive use ,breast fed duration ,age at first birth,
preceding child sex and correctly know duration of optimum birth interval were independent
determinants of inter birth interval .The city health department focus on awareness creation and
design strategies to encourage women to utilize modern contraceptive and to breast fed the baby
