Abstract:
Introduction: Perinatal mortality is defined as both stillbirth and early neonatal deaths which
occurs from 28 gestational age of pregnancy to seven completed days after birth or at least
one kilogram. Perinatal mortality is a health indicator for prenatal, intra partum and newborn
care. It is one of the major challenges for under-five mortality. Up to the knowledge of
principal investigator while searching different literatures, there is limited number of studies
done related to perinatal deaths in our country. Most of the researchers have used secondary
data. Therefore; this study may fill this gap by assessing magnitude of perinatal mortality and
associated factors among babies born based on the primary data.
Objective: To assess the magnitude of perinatal mortality and associated factors among
babies born in the hospitals of North Shoa, Oromia from January to march 19/2018.
Methods: Institutional based cross sectional study design was conducted among 631study
participants. Epi-data 4.2 and SPSS Version 21 was used for data entry and analysis
respectively. The variable associated with the outcome variable in Bivariate p value <0.25
was considered for further multivariable analysis to control for potential confounding. Crude
and Adjusted Odd Ratios was calculated to assess the association between dependent and
independent variable with 95% CI. The variable which shows p ≤0.05 was considered as
statistically significance.
Results: The magnitude of perinatal, mortality was found to be 9.0% (95%, CI: 7%-11%).
Maternal age less than 18 years (AOR, 4.80CI; 1.33-17.33), history of perinatal loss(AOR
9.47,CI:3.32-26.98), gestational age less than 37weeks (AOR,4.01 CI:1.56-10.28),Apgar
score(4-6) (AOR,5.24,CI:1.93-13.30) and low birth weight (AOR, 4.64CI:1.85-11.60) was
significantly associated with perinatal mortality.
Conclusion: Generally, this study has high perinatal death, which needs more attention.
Maternal age less than 18 years, gestational age less than 37 wks, low birth weight, history of
perinatal loss and (4-6) Apgar score at 5 minutes were significant predictors of perinatal death.
