Statistical Analysis on the Factors and Causes Affecting Maternal and Infant Mortality in Nigeria

Abstract

Maternal and infant deaths are devastating medical complication in many countries, in which Nigeria is not exempted. It has been realized that complication of child birth and pregnancy are leading causes of death among women of reproductive ages. Therefore, this study aimed at determining the factors responsible for maternal and infant mortality in Nigeria between 2000 and 2019. The descriptive statistics of the skewness shows that the distribution of the data is fairly symmetrical and the time plot displays a downward and gradual decreasing trend for both maternal and infant mortality over the considerable years. The trend analysis of the model produces forecast performance with percentage accuracy measures of MAPE with 3% and 2% for both maternal and infant mortality. The exploratory data analysis (EDA) of maternal and infant mortality under the study shows that the prevalence of undernourishment rate is not significant to the model at 5% level of significant. Therefore, prevalence of undernourishment rate is the major factor affecting the death of the child and mother at the child birt h. Hence, the government are hereby implored to improve on training levels of pregnant women at the antenatal stages and empowering families and communities to reduce maternal and infant deaths.