June 28, 2022 – Fewer than 3% of births are formally registered with civil authorities in Ethiopia. In order to estimate the number and prevalence of stillbirths, neonatal deaths, and medically vulnerable newborns in Ethiopia, researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health documented the frequency of these events in more than 2,800 women in Amhara, Ethiopia, between December 2018 and November 2020.
The lead author of the study, published June 24, 2022 in JAMA Network Open, was Grace Chan, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology.
In the studied cohort, almost 4% of the pregnancies resulted in an early loss and more than 2% were stillbirths. Of the live births, about 41% were born preterm, small-for-gestational-age, large-for-gestational-age, or with low-birth-weight. This data should help policymakers allocate resources and target interventions to improve newborn survival in Ethiopia.
Read the JAMA Network Open study: Estimates of Stillbirths, Neonatal Mortality, and Medically Vulnerable Live Births in Amhara, Ethiopia