Perinatal Factors Associated With Birth Asphyxia Among Neonates In Maternity Ward Kakamega County Refferal Hospital, Kenya

ABSTRACT

Despite the important advances in perinatal care in the past decades, asphyxia remains

a severe condition leading to significant mortality and morbidity. Perinatal asphyxia

has an incidence of 1 to 6 per 1,000 live full-term births, and represents the third most

common cause of neonatal death (23%) after preterm birth (28%) and severe

infections (26%). Each year approximately 24% of neonatal deaths occur due to birth

asphyxia with an equal number of survivors with serious neurological sequel, leading

to detrimental long term consequences for both child and family. The objective of this

study was to determine the risk factors associated with Birth asphyxia in order to

identify preventive interventions to reduce neonatal morbidity and mortality. The

study design was retrospective institutional based study which involved all neonates

born at term diagnosed with and without birth asphyxia. Systematic random sampling

to get subjects files, purposive method used for key informant interview. Data for

analysis was captured via SPSS version 19 and summary descriptive statistics such as

mean, percentages and standard deviations were generated. Inferential statistics

Transformation of data was done to obtain appropriate categories for data analysis and

logistics regression modeling for asphyxia against identified risk factors. To

determine the risk factors of asphyxia, odds ratios (OR) at 95% CI were obtained

together with their respective p-values results were set at < 0.05. Logistic regression

modeling was done to determine the strength of association of the risk factors with

asphyxia. Out of total 422 neonates, (29.1%) had birth asphyxia and rest (70.9%)

were normal. Significant socio-demographic risk factors were maternal age (OR 3.0

CI 95% 1.9 – 4.9,