Four decades of measuring stillbirths and neonatal deaths in Demographic and Health Surveys: historical review

Table 1 DHS phases’ summary of neonatal mortality and stillbirth rates by maternity history type

DHS phase	Number of surveys (conducted)	Mean stillbirth rate (95%CI)³	Mean neonatal mortality rate (95%CI)³	Median SBR:NMR⁴	Median proportion of NND that are day 0-6 ENMR:NMR⁵
Full birth history
I¹	29
II	23	14.08 (10.59–17.56)	24.38 (17.87–30.88)	0.61	0.69
III	54	13.89 (10.09–17.68)	28.13 (22.82–33.42)	0.47	0.69
IV	61	15.81 (13.51–18.11)	30.78 (27.27–34.29)	0.55	0.73
V	50	11.83 (10.21–13.45)	26.21 (22.84–29.57)^²	0.43	0.75
VI	59	11.90 (10.23–13.56)	24.63 (21.87–27.39)	0.51	0.78
VII	45	13.16 (10.81–15.53)^¹	23.79 (20.70–26.89)^³	0.61	0.78
Full pregnancy history
I¹	1
II	0
III	9	15.10 (7.74 – 22.46)	24.94 (15.63–34.25)	0.51	0.74
IV	7	13.6 (8.00 – 19.20)	27.38 (19.09–35.66)	0.49	0.76
V	7	14.16 (7.96 – 20.36)	19.57 (9.70–29.44)^²	0.67	0.81
VI	7	12.10 (0.81 – 23.39)	24.66 (6.70–42.58)	0.53	0.77
VII	5	9.18 (2.51 – 15.84)^¹	18.60 (0.51–36.69)^³	0.66	0.80

¹Data collected, but neonatal mortality rate not disaggregated in the reports
²Stillbirth rates only available from surveys in countries with high contraceptive prevalence using model questionnaires 2A and 3A
³Proportion test comparing the mean stillbirth rate or mean neonatal mortality rate by survey module in each DHS phase: p = 0.016 in ^¹; p = 0.026 in ^³; p = 0.020 in ^³
⁴Trend test comparing SBR:NMR for each maternity history type found “no trend” across the ordered DHS phases (full birth history: p = 0.949 and full pregnancy history: p = 0.317)
⁵DHS refers to the Demographic and Health Surveys; SB refers to stillbirths; NND refers to neonatal deaths; NMR refers to neonatal mortality rate; SBR refers to stillbirth rate; and ENMR refers to early neonatal mortality rate
*Survey SBR and NMR estimates extracted from DHS STATcompiler

ISSN: 1478-7954