Spatial patterns of fetal mortality and social deprivation in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Canuto, Indianara Maria de Barros
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Bonfim, Cristine Vieira do, Macêdo, Vilma Costa de
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Baiana de Saúde Pública (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://rbsp.sesab.ba.gov.br/index.php/rbsp/article/view/3625
• topic: Mortalidade fetal; Disparidades nos níveis de saúde; Estatísticas vitais; Análise espacial; Pobreza; Fetal mortality; Disparities in health levels; Vital statistics; Spatial analysis; Poverty; Mortalidad fetal; Disparidades en el estado de salud; Estadísticas vitales; Análisis espacial; Pobreza

Fetal mortality is an indicator of obstetric care and living conditions, capable of reflecting the state of women’s health and the quality and accessibility of prenatal care and intrapartum care. To analyze the spatial patterns of fetal mortality, preventability of deaths, and social deprivation in the state of Pernambuco, an ecological study was carried out considering municipalities, health regions, and mesoregions as units of analysis. Fetal deaths registered in the Mortality Information System in the period from 2010 to 2017 were included. The deaths are classified as preventable by the Brazilian List of Causes of Preventable Deaths by Interventions of the Unified Health System. Descriptive statistics and the Qui-square test were applied for comparisons of proportions of causes of death. In the elaboration of the social deprivation index, the factorial analysis technique by principal components with the Bartlett’s sphericity test was used to identify the correlation matrix. With the calculated index, the municipalities were grouped in social deprivation strata by the k-means technique. Bayesian analysis and Moran’s spatial statistics were applied to identify priority areas of fetal mortality and the index of social deprivation. There were 12,337 fetal deaths registered, of which 8,927 (72.3%) were due to preventable causes. The variables of mother’s age, number of dead children, type of pregnancy, type of birth, and weight at birth were related to preventability of death. In the construction of the social deprivation index, Bartlett’s sphericity test (χ² of 144.463; p < 0.01) and the KMO coefficient (0.8) showed that the correlations between the items were adequate for factor analysis, as well as the correlations between the indicators. The social deprivation index pointed to two factors that, together, explained 77.63% of the total variance. The rate of preventable fetal mortality showed an increase among social deprivation strata, with rates of 7.99 per thousand births (low deprivation), 8.06 per thousand (medium deprivation), 8.83 per thousand (high deprivation), and 10.7 per thousand (very high social deprivation). The global Moran index verified significant spatial autocorrelation for the Bayesian fetal mortality rate (I = 0.10; p = 0.05), for the Bayesian preventable fetal mortality rate (I = 0.13; p = 0.03) e for the o social deprivation index (I = 0.53; p = 0.01). Some municipalities of the mesoregions of São Francisco and of Sertão of Pernambuco have simultaneously high fetal mortality and preventable fetal mortality, in addition to a very high rate of social deprivation. The spatial analysis identified areas with the highest risk for fetal mortality. The index of social deprivation relates to some determinants of fetal deaths in areas with the worst living conditions. We detected priority areas for the intervention of public policies to reduce fetal mortality and its determinants.