This study explores the factors associated with neonatal mortality and maternal health care in Nepal. The subjects were 4375 births reported in the 1996 Nepal Family Health Survey. Maternal and child health care was found to have a significant association with neonatal mortality, although preceding birth interval and sex of child had stronger effects. Four aspects of maternal care were found to be highly associated with region, household ownership of assets, mother's education and father's education. This indicates that accessibility, affordability and availability of maternal health care are important factors to consider in future research on neonatal mortality.
This paper proposes a new method of measuring excess risk of child mortality in cross-sectional surveys, which is applied to DHS I data for Burundi, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The expected child mortality experience is estimated for each mother on the basis of child's age, mother's age at child's birth and her parity, and compared with her observed experience. Mothers who exceed their expected child mortality experience and also had more than one child die are considered to have excess child mortality. Zimbabwe had the greatest concentration of child deaths as measured by a simple ratio of mothers to deaths, but when observed experience was compared with expected it had less than half as many excess deaths as Uganda and Burundi. In all three countries mother's education had a strong negative association with the risk of excess child mortality, and in Zimbabwe and Burundi there were significant regional differences.
Agyei (1984) found that modern methods of contraception (pill, injection, loop, condom) were currently used by 13% of rural and 20% of urban Papua New Guinea women. This is substantially more than the estimate given in the final draft of the National Health Plan, 1986-90, of 7% of women of childbearing age using any method.One possible explanation for this difference could be that the official estimate is based on service statistics which understate contraceptive use. Another is that Agyei's 'single stage sample design' may have over-represented current users. As some provinces were not included in his sample, more details of the selection of 65 cluster units are needed. In 1980, Papua New Guinea's total citizen population of 2,978,057 was 88% rural (McMurray, 1985) yet only 30 clusters represent the rural population while 35 represent the urban population. Further, it is not indicated whether either the rural or urban sample includes the census category 'rural nonvillage', defined as 'a collection of persons living in a rural area but not in a traditional rural village (e.g. a mission station, aid post, plantation, school, settlement scheme)' (National Statistical Office, no date).Some rough checks on the representativeness of Agyei's sample can be made from the available census data. The 1971 census found that 73% of all women aged 15 and over had never attended school (Skeldon, 1979) while the 1980 census found that 83% of all Papua New Guinea females aged 5 years and over and not at school had no education (National Statistical Office, no date). In Agyei's sample only 37% of rural women and 23% of urban women had no education.Unpublished tabulations from the 1980 sample census (a separate enumeration using a more detailed questionnaire and covering approximately 4-5% of the total population) indicate that only 5% of the urban women aged 15-49 were employed in professional and technical occupations compared with 10% in professional occupations alone in Agyei's sample. Agyei's 'unemployed' category must, in fact, refer to persons with no occupation, or to persons not employed. The sample census shows that 80% of urban women and 57% of rural women aged 15-49 were not employed, compared with Agyei's 62% and 31% unemployed. 245
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.