Maternal and perinatal mortality: geospatial analysis of inequality in pregnancy related and perinatal mortality in Ethiopia

While there is ample evidence of the overall reduction in perinatal and pregnancy-related mortality in Ethiopia, it remains uncertain if geographic disparities have diminished. This study aimed to investigate perinatal and pregnancy-related mortality spatial distributions, trends over time, and factors associated with the distribution in Ethiopia. We used data from Ethiopian Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 2000, 2005, 2011, and 2016. In each survey, around 15 500 women aged 15-49 years were interviewed from about 550 neighborhoods randomly sampled from across the country. Perinatal and pregnancy-related mortality were used as outcome variables. We carried out an optimized hotspot analysis using the Getis-Ord Gi* statistic in ArcGIS Pro to identify the time trend of geographical clusters with high (hot spot) and low (cold spot) perinatal and pregnancy-related mortality. In addition, we conducted a geographically weighted Poisson regression in R to examine the factors associated with the spatial distribution of perinatal and pregnancy-related mortality. Perinatal and pregnancy-related mortality exhibited a clustering pattern, indicating the presence of geographic inequality, with a decreasing pattern from 2000 to 2016. We detected hotspot areas in developed administrative regions of Amhara, Oromia, and Southern Nations, indicating inequality within large regions. Inequality in perinatal mortality was associated with rural residence, younger age of women, and high birth rate, whereas pregnancy-related mortality was associated with low autonomy, younger age, and anemia. We found that anemia (P-value = .01) has a geographically varying relationship with perinatal mortality, while education (P-value = .03) and wealth (P-value = 0.01) are associated with pregnancy-related mortality. While there has been a reduction during the study period, geographical disparities in perinatal and pregnancy-related mortality still persist. Therefore, targeting intervention programs in areas where spatial inequalities still persist is essential for effectively utilizing scarce resources.