Abstract
Reducing the rate of mortality in neonates to as low as 12 per 1,000 live births is one of the clearly spelt out aims of the third tenet of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) because of its importance to the dynamics of population. While there have been various studies focused majorly on the causes, rates and determinants of neonatal mortality in Nigeria, studies on the impact of maternal/child care characteristics on neonatal mortalityand the potential implication of failing to attain the SDG target for neonatal mortality have seemingly been neglected. In this study, we undertake an analysis of the impact of maternal / child care characteristics on neonatal mortality using the logistic regression model. Results from the study showed that antenatal care (P-value = 0.000, odds ratio = 0.546 for women who visited the hospital during pregnancy on more than 5 occasions), post natal care (P-value = 0.004, odds ratio = 0.402 for women who received early neonatal care from skilled medical personnel), place ofdelivery (P-value = 0.000, odds ratio = 0.592 for babies that were delivered in a government hospital) and skill of birth attendant (P-value = 0.000, odds ratio = 0.706 for babies who were delivered by trained doctors/nurses/midwives) had significant impact on neonatal mortality at the 95% confidence level implying that improved maternal health care: before, during and immediately after delivery as well as the quality of care to motherand child are both important and necessary to the reduction of neonatal mortality in Nigeria. To achieve the sustainable development target for neonatal mortality, it is therefore recommended that stake holders in the public health sector improve the quality of existing health care facilities and access to quality services.
 Keywords: Neonatal mortality, logistic regression, maternal care, child health care, Nigeria
Highlights
Neonatal mortality which is the absence of all traces of life in a live birth between birth and the first 28 days of life (World Health Organization (WHO), 2011) is one of the glaring targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) because of its importance to the dynamics of any population and the role that it plays as a barometer for the measurement of social economic and demographic development (Hall, 2005)
The feeling that we have repeated failed the generation and the new born is made even truer by the fact that there have not been any substantial changes in neonatal mortality in the last decade (40 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2008 versus 39 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2018) (National Population Commission (NPC), 2018; National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), 2018)
A total of 33,778 children born to the interviewed women representing 99.6% of the children born to the interviewed women within the five years preceding the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) 2018 were reported
Summary
Neonatal mortality which is the absence of all traces of life in a live birth between birth and the first 28 days of life (World Health Organization (WHO), 2011) is one of the glaring targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) because of its importance to the dynamics of any population and the role that it plays as a barometer for the measurement of social economic and demographic development (Hall, 2005). Over 24 million babies will die in the first month of their lives between 2019 and 2030 which is approximately 2.2 million preventable annual neonatal deaths (UN-IGME, 2019) Most of these neonatal deaths occur in low and middle income countries with the highest number of occurrence recorded in south-central Asian countries and the highest rates generally in sub-Saharan Africa. The feeling that we have repeated failed the generation and the new born is made even truer by the fact that there have not been any substantial changes in neonatal mortality in the last decade (40 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2008 versus 39 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2018) (National Population Commission (NPC), 2018; National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), 2018) This alarmingly high frequency with which new born babies die do . The objective of this paper is to report the study on the impact of maternal / child care characteristics on neonatal mortality using the logistic regression model
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