IntroductionMeasures of maternal death are fundamental to a country’s health and development status. In developing countries, it remains a daunting and largely unmet public health challenge. There were two studies completed over 10 years ago in Jimma University Specialized Hospital to identify trends, but recently there have been many changes in Ethiopia to reduce maternal death. Therefore, it is important to track the achievements made in Ethiopia in the context of Jimma University Specialized Hospital. No study undertaken in the country has quantified deaths of women from specific causes after controlling confounders.ObjectiveTo assess trends and causes of maternal death in Jimma University Specialized Hospital, southwest Ethiopia.MethodsA time-matched case–control study was conducted on 600 (120 cases and 480 controls) females who utilized obstetrics and gynecology services from January 2010 to December 2014. To observe trends in maternal death, maternal mortality ratio was calculated for each year. Stata version 13 was used to analyze causal inference using propensity score matching method.ResultsMaternal mortality ratio was 857/100,000 and had a decreasing trend from it’s highest in 2010 of 1,873/100,000 to it’s lowest of 350/100,000 in 2014. The leading cause of maternal death was hemorrhage (54%) (β=0.477, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.307, 0.647), followed by pregnancy-induced hypertension (20%) (β=0.232, 95% CI: 0.046, 0.419), and anemia (12%) (β=0.110, 95% CI: 0.017, 0.204).ConclusionThere is a decreasing trend of maternal death. Hemorrhage was the major cause of death identified in each year of study.

Addressing the nutritional problems of adolescent girls is important as their nutritional status has a negative effect on the future generation. This study aimed to assess the optimal dietary practices and nutritional knowledge of school adolescent girls in Jimma Zone, Southwest Ethiopia. School-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 455 school adolescent girls. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify independent variables. Majority (61.3%) of students had dietary diversity score less than five and their mean (±SD) dietary diversity score was 4.34 ± 1.41. The majority (55.8%) of adolescent girls had a good knowledge score about nutrition related information which they earned from the school (86.6%). Low dietary diversity of school adolescent girls was positively associated with attending government schools, lack of maternal education and low-economic status. Therefore, both government and non-government organizations need to focus on school and community based nutrition intervention to address the low dietary diversity of school girl adolescents. Background Adolescent girl malnutrition is a common nutritional problem due to poor diet and lack of health care service in the developing world. Mostly, household diets are predominantly starchy staples with few animal products and seasonal fruits and vegetables. Addressing the nutritional problems of adolescent girl is important as their nutritional status has a negative effect on the future generation (Choudhary, Seema, & Shukla, 2010). Being in transition, adolescents may no longer benefit from the attention and care that usually go to children, but they may not get the protections associated with adulthood either. Adolescent has typically being considered as low risk of poor health and often receive few health care resource and less attention. However, this approach ignores the fact that many health problems later in life can be improved by adapting healthier life style habit during adolescence (WHO, 2009). Dietary diversity is the consumption of an adequate variety of food groups (Alam, Roy, Ahmed, & Ahmed, 2010; Wagah Margaret, Bader, Deligia, & Dop, 2005). A monotonous diet lacks essential micronutrients and contributes to the burden of malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies (Allen, 2008). The problem is particularly critical in adolescents because they need energy and nutrient-dense foods to grow and develop both physically and mentally and to live a healthy life (Kant, 2004; Savy, Martin-Prével,

No abstract

Abstract:Background: Voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) is an integral component of HIV prevention and care strategies worldwide. Methods: A cross sectional study design was used to collect data. The collected data were entered in Epi Info version3.5.3. Data analyses were done using SPSS for windows version 16.0. Descriptive analysis was used to describe the data. Binary logistic regression analysis was used to measure the association between the dependent variable and independent variables calculating odds ratio and its 95% confidence interval (CI). Statistical significance was set at α. ≤ 0.05. Multivariable analyses were applied to identify the relative effect of explanatory variables on the dependent variable. Result: The prevalence of HIV testing was 52.8%. The finding also showed that students who are sexually active (AOR=1.261, CI=1.134, 1.822), youth having a boy/girl friend (AOR=1.233, CI=1.211, 2.923), youth having sex with their partner (AOR=3.823, CI=1.891, 7.730), who are willing to pay for VCT(AOR=2.233, CI=1.633, 3.052), those who discuss HIV/AIDS with their family (AOR=1.504, CI=1.029, 2.199), colleague utilized VCT (AOR=1.775, CI= 1.269, 2.482), were more likely to be tested. Conclusions and Recommendations: The results indicated that there is still less number of students utilized VCT service: therefore there is a need of further information, education and communication program with regard to increase VCT service uptake, expanding youth targeted VCT service.

Background: -Ensuring institutional delivery for each child birth is the most critical intervention in reducing maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity. In Ethiopia the proportions of births delivered in health institutions is very low and even for women who have access to the services. The proportion of birth occurring in health facilities is only 16%. Objective: -To investigate intention of pregnant women to use institutional delivery and associated factors from March to April 2016. Methods: -A Community based cross-sectional study was conducted in Wollaita Soddo town. Theory of Planned Behavior was employed to evaluate intention of pregnant women for delivery utilization. Data was collected by using pre-tested, structured questionnaire. The data collected was checked for its completeness and consistency, coded, entered and cleaned by using Epi data 3.5.1 and exported to SPSS version 20.00 statistical software. Data analysis was done for proximal and distal variables differently based on their presence in the model. Result:-A total of 326 pregnant women who had ANC follow up were included in the study. On multiple logistic regression husband's occupational status and informed about delivery places were statistically significantly associated with intention to use institutional delivery among ANC attendants from distal variables and Attitude and subjective norms were statistically significantly associated with intention from proximal variables. The odds of intention to use institutional delivery among pregnant women who were informed about delivery places was 2.658 times more likely than those who were not informed about delivery places AOR=2.658(1.357, 5.207) at P-value 0.005.Those women whose husbands' were employed were 2.2 times more likely to intend to use institutional delivery than women whose husbands' were not employed (AOR=2.2(1.308, 3.7) at P-value 0.003. Conclusion:-The study concluded that the intention of giving birth at health institution increased with positive attitude towards institutional delivery, being informed by health professionals about the place of delivery and husband's occupational status being employed and decreased with subjective norms.