Abstract

Introduction- Stillbirth rates are unacceptably high in developing countries. It reects the suboptimum quality of maternal and child health services. Material And Methods- Prospective observational cross sectional study, carried out for one year duration at tertiary care referral hospital in central India. Results-There were 9165 deliveries and 9318 babies born in the hospital.There were 318 stillbirths of which 245(77%) were antepartum stillbirths and 73(23%) were intra-partum stillbirths. The stillbirth rate in the present study was 34/1000 births. Ante-partum haemorrhage (36%) and pregnancy induced hypertension (21%) were most common causes of ante-partum stillbirths where as extreme prematurity with very low birth weight (41%), birth asphyxia, meconium aspiration (21%) and intra-partum haemorrhage (15%) were common causes of intra-partum stillbirths. Conclusion- There is high rate of stillbirths in the present study. Health education, improvement of maternal nutrition, regular antenatal check-ups, high risk pregnancy identication and timely referral and institutional deliveries will help in preventing large number of stillbirths.

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