Abstract
BackgroundBecause maternal mortality is a rare event, it is important to study maternal near-miss as a complement to evaluate and improve the quality of obstetric care. Thus, the study was conducted with the aim of assessing the incidence and causes of maternal near-miss.MethodsA facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted in five selected public hospitals of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from May 1, 2015 to April 30, 2016. All maternal near-miss cases admitted to the selected hospitals during the study period were prospectively recruited. World Health Organization criteria were used to identify maternal near-miss cases. The number of maternal near-miss cases over one year per 1000 live births occurring during the same year was calculated to determine the incidence of maternal near-miss. Underlying and contributing causes of maternal near-miss were documented from each participant’s record.ResultsDuring the one-year period, there were a total of 238 maternal near-miss cases and 29,697 live births in all participating hospitals, which provides a maternal near-miss incidence ratio of 8.01 per 1000 live births. The underlying causes of the majority of maternal near-miss cases were hypertensive disorders and obstetric hemorrhage. Anemia was the major contributing cause reported for maternal near-miss. Most of the maternal near-miss cases occurred before the women’s arrival at the participating hospitals.ConclusionThe study demonstrated a lower maternal near-miss incidence ratio compared to previous country-level studies. The majority of the near-miss cases occurred before the women’s arrival at the participating hospitals, which underscores the importance of improving pre-hospital barriers. Efforts made toward improvement in the management of life-threatening obstetric complications could reduce the occurrence of maternal near-miss problems that occur during hospitalization.
Highlights
The improvement of maternal health has made slow progress in most of the sub-Saharan African countries [1]
During the one-year period, there were a total of 238 maternal near-miss cases and 29,697 live births in all participating hospitals, which provides a maternal near-miss incidence ratio of 8.01 per 1000 live births
The study demonstrated a lower maternal near-miss incidence ratio compared to previous country-level studies
Summary
The improvement of maternal health has made slow progress in most of the sub-Saharan African countries [1]. Despite the high number of maternal deaths in many of the institutions within these countries, the absolute number for each center classifies these events as rare, which leads to a reduced level of power to allow the studies to investigate the potential risk factors. In this situation, severe acute maternal morbidity or maternal near-miss could serve as a surrogate for maternal death to evaluate the quality of obstetric care in particular health institutions. The study was conducted with the aim of assessing the incidence and causes of maternal near-miss
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