Factors associated neonatal mortality in Uganda

Abstract

An estimated 3.3 million newborns are expected to die worldwide within the first 4 weeks of life and 98% of these are in low and middle income countries. Currently, Uganda`s neonatal mortality is still high though declined from 56.7% to 20.7% and this is said to be high among women in rural areas compared to those in urban areas. Therefore, this study aimed at finding the relationship between socio-economic and demographic factors which are associated with neonatal mortality in western Uganda. This research was based on the Uganda census, 2014 data. The data was analyzed using STATA 2015. Analysis was done using 2 levels; univariate and bivariate. At univariate analysis frequency distributions were used to describe characteristics of the respondents in order to get, the percentage distribution of women who lost their babies at zero and before one month proportion of women using, while at bivariate level, cross tabulation and Pearson's chi square (𝑋2) test were used to find out the relationship between NMR and each of the independent variables. Results indicated that mother`s age, total children ever born and marital status were associated with neonatal mortality since the p-value was less than 0.05. Other variables like region, place of residence, religion, ethnicity and economic status were not associated with neonatal mortality. The majority of the mother lost their babies at zero month compared to those who lost babies between four weeks of birth

Their fore, the government, health centers and university should emphasize and invest more in programmes and projects aiming at informing the public about the importance of male involvement in the reproductive health of their partners as it can reduce the number of children who die at birth and within four weeks of birth