Afghanistan Mortality Survey 2010 - Measure DHS

other words, about two in five deaths to women age 15-49 in the seven years preceding the survey werepregnancy related.Table 7.1 shows that the pregnancy-related mortality rate increases steadily from age 15-19 to age40-44 and then decreases at age 45-49. Because pregnancy-related deaths in each age group are arelatively rare occurrence, the age-specific pattern should be interpreted with caution.Because women face a risk of pregnancy-related mortality for each of their births, it is possible tocalculate the lifetime risk of pregnancy-related mortality based on the level of fertility in Afghanistan.This measure describes the cumulative loss of human life due to pregnancy-related death over the femalelife course. In the seven years preceding the survey, the lifetime risk of pregnancy-related mortality was0.02 (or 2 percent). The data imply that about 1 in 50 women will die of pregnancy-related causes duringtheir lifetime and that one Afghan woman dies about every 2 hours from pregnancy-related causes.Table 7.1 Pregnancy-related mortality ratesDirect estimates of pregnancy-related mortality rates, from the sibling history, in the seven yearspreceding the survey, by age, Afghanistan 2010AgeTotaldeathsPregnancyrelateddeathsSisterexposureyearsPregnancyrelatedmortalityrate 1Proportion ofpregnancyrelateddeathsto all femaledeaths15-19 123 39 110,187 0.358 32.220-24 118 55 98,458 0.557 46.725-29 95 49 81,164 0.607 51.830-34 93 39 61,521 0.627 41.735-39 69 31 43,903 0.711 45.540-44 80 30 25,599 1.184 38.045-49 44 12 13,713 0.907 28.0Total 621 256 434,546 0.590 41.3Total (excluding South zone) 433 167 293,792 0.570 38.7General fertility ratio (GFR)0.185 aPregnancy-related mortality ratio 2 327(CI: 260-394)Pregnancy-related mortality ratio 2 315excluding South zone (CI: 231-399)Lifetime risk of pregnancy-relateddeath 3 0.02CI: Confidence interval1Expressed per 1,000 woman-years of exposure2Expressed per 100,000 live births; calculated as the age-adjusted pregnancy-related mortality ratetimes 100 divided by the age-adjusted GFR3Lifetime risk of pregnancy-related death per woman = 1-(1-PRM ratio/100,000) TFR where TFRrepresents the total fertility rate for the seven-year period preceding the surveyaAge-adjusted rate based on age distribution of respondents to the Woman’s QuestionnaireThe pregnancy-related mortality ratio, which is obtained by dividing the age-standardizedpregnancy-related mortality rate by the age-standardized general fertility rate, is often considered a moreuseful measure of pregnancy-related mortality because it measures the obstetric risk associated with eachlive birth. Table 7.1 shows that the pregnancy-related mortality ratio for Afghanistan is 327 deaths per100,000 live births for the seven-year period before the survey. This estimate is equivalent to 3 deaths per1,000 live births or 0.3 percent of all live births.Because about one-third of the rural population in the South zone was not covered in the surveydue to the security situation, there is a substantial urban bias in that zone. Therefore, the pregnancyrelatedmortality ratios are shown for Afghanistan excluding the South zone in addition to the national128 | Maternal Mortality