Article Sidebar
Article Details
The entire contents of the Tropical Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology are protected under Indian and international copyrights. The Journal, however, grants to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium for any reasonable non-commercial purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship and ownership of the rights. The journal also grants the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal non-commercial use.
This journal content is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
Main Article Content
Maternal Mortality in a Tertiary Care Centre in Nepal
Abstract
Aims and objective: To identify the maternal deaths and identify the causes and key risk factors.
Method: A retrospective (descriptive) study was carried out at BPKIHS by analyzing the case sheets of all maternal deaths of four years (April 1998- March 2002). The cause of death and the factors that may have indirectly contributed to death were noted.
Results: The total number of deaths during these four years was forty-four, with 61.4% of patients being multigravid and 96.5% unbooked. More than 85% of patients reported from periphery. The majority (93.18%) of deaths were due to direct causes. The most common cause of maternal death was sepsis (43.18%) of which septic abortion was the leading cause (27.27%). Hypertensive disorders accounted for 29.54% of deaths and out of these, eclampsia was the leading disorder. Haemorrhage accounted for 13.66% of deaths. There were two cases of rupture uterus (4.5%) Anaemia was found in 29.54% of cases and it may have contributed indirectly to maternal mortality. Three deaths (6.8%) were due to medical causes.
Conclusion: Preventable causes accounted for majority of deaths. Septic induced abortion and eclampsia together accounted for more than 50 % of deaths. The non-availability of safe abortion services, the mountainous terrain, lack of good primary /district level hospitals and poor transport facility seem to be the most important reasons for most maternal deaths in our study.
Key Words: Maternal Mortality, Nepal.
[Trop J Obstet Gynaecol, 2004; 21:168-171]
