Analysis of Determinants of Maternal Mortality in 50 Selected Countries Worldwide

In the Sub-Saharan Africa, a woman has 1 in 12 chance of dying during pregnancy or childbirth compared to 1 in 4,000 in developed countries. Women die as a result of complications during and following pregnancy and childbirth but the reasons surrounding the cause of death regional may be influenced by various governance, economic and socio-demographic variables other than poor health systems. The study aimed at investigating the factors affecting maternal mortality in selected World Health Organization countries.

The design of the study was ecological and used secondary data from recognized data bases to model the effect of governance and economic variables on maternal mortality.

The data was summarized into descriptive statistics using SPSS version 24 and Multiple Linear regression was used for the analysis of the predictive abilities of governance, economics, and quality of health care, socioeconomic and human development variables on the selected countries with level of significance set at P<0.05.

The findings of the study revealed that at each increase of 1% of GII contributes to an increase of MMR by 583.215%. Each increase of population with at least some secondary education contributes to a decrease of 4.95% or otherwise, MMR decreases by 4.95 with each 1%population with at least secondary education. Switzerland recorded the lowest maternal mortality rate of 5 per 100000 with Sierra Leone recording the highest 1360 per 100000 live births recorded by Sierra Leone. Education of women and for that matter women empowerment was found significant contributing greatly to the reduction of maternal mortality of a country.Countries must invest in the empowerment of women for and will impact on the maternal health of the society.

Keywords: Maternal mortality, Governance, Gender Inequality.