Article Text
Abstract
Background Maternal mortality remains a public health problem despite several global efforts. Globally, about 830 women die of pregnancy-related death per day, with more than two-third of these cases occurring in Africa. We examined the spatial distribution of maternal mortality in Africa and explored the influence of SDoH on the spatial distribution.
Methods We used country-level secondary data of 54 African countries collected between 2006 and 2018 from three databases namely, World Development Indicator, WHO’s Global Health Observatory Data and Human Development Report. We performed descriptive analyses, presented in tables and maps. The spatial analysis involved local indicator of spatial autocorrelation maps and spatial regression. Finally, we built Bayesian networks to determine and show the strength of social determinants associated with maternal mortality.
Results We found that the average prevalence of maternal mortality ratio (MMR) in Africa was 415 per 100 000 live births. Findings from the spatial analyses showed clusters (hotspots) of MMR with seven countries (Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, Chad and Cameroon, Mauritania), all within the Middle and West Africa. On the other hand, the cold spot clusters were formed by two countries; South Africa and Namibia; eight countries (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Ghana, Gabon and Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Cape Verde) formed low–high clusters; thus, indicating that these countries have significantly low MMR but within the neighbourhood of countries with significantly high MMR. The findings from the regression and Bayesian network analysis showed that gender inequities and the proportion of skilled birth attendant are strongest social determinants that drive the variations in maternal mortality across Africa.
Conclusion Maternal mortality is very high in Africa especially in countries in the middle and western African subregions. To achieve the target 3.1 of the sustainable development goal on maternal health, there is a need to design effective strategies that will address gender inequalities and the shortage of health professionals.
- child health
- health policy
- health services research
- maternal health
- epidemiology
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Footnotes
Handling editor Seye Abimbola
Twitter @SannietYaya, @aosanjorin
Contributors SY contributed to the study design and conceptualisation. SY and SSA reviewed the literature performed the analysis and drafted the first draft of this manuscript. SAA provided technical support and critically reviewed the manuscript for its intellectual content. SY had final responsibility to submit for publication. All authors read and amended drafts of the paper and approved the final version.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
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Competing interests SY is editorial board member of this journal.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data availability statement Data for this study were sourced from World Development Indicator (https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators), WHO’s Global Health Observatory Data (https://www.who.int/data/gho) and Human Development Report (http://hdr.undp.org/en/data).
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