Determinants of preterm birth among mothers delivered in Central Zone Hospitals, Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

OBJECTIVE: Preterm deliveries were responsible for 3.1 million neonatal deaths that occurred globally in 2010, of them 35% were directly related to preterm. This study was aimed to assess the determinants of preterm birth among women delivered of Central zone. A facility-based cross-sectional study was carried out from March to May 2018, in four randomly selected hospitals of Central zone. A total of 413 participants were interviewed using a pre-tested structured questionnaire. Data were entered into Epi-info Version 3.5.3 and then exported to SPSS Version 21 for analysis. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis was carried out to assess the association. Statistical significance was declared by 95% confidence interval of the odds ratio. RESULT: From the total (413) participants, 78.7% of participants were in the age group of 20-34 years and in this study the prevalence of preterm birth was 12.8%. Factors like, marital status of unmarried (AOR = 5.21, 95% CI 1.8-15.075), mid upper arm circumference (MUAC) (< 11 cm) (AOR = 2.42, 95% CI 1.204-4.851) were independent predictors of preterm birth among women delivered in the study area.