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Estimating and forecasting age-specific maternal mortality rates in Brazil

Bernardo L. Queiroz, Universidade Federal De Minas Gerais
Marcia C. Castro, Harvard University
Ricardo Pedroso, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Brazil has not fulfilled its international commitment to reduce 75% of maternal deaths by 2015. In that year, the maternal mortality ratio was around 62 per 100,000 live births and it increased to 64.4 per 100,000 thousand in 2016. This number hides deep regional inequalities, varying from 44.2 in the southern region to 84.5 per 100,000 in the northern region. In the state of Amapa, the ratio reaches 141.7 per 100,000 live births. In Brazil, maternal mortality studies are challenging due to limitations in vital statistics records, especially regarding the quality in data collection. These studies are relevant to help public health policy makers to track trends and prepare proper measures in order to achieve such goals. In this paper, we use maternal mortality estimated based on the Brazilian Mortality Database to forecast maternal mortality by age groups to 2030. We consider estimates produced in a previous paper combining alternative demographic methods to adjust both death counts and live births to produce more robust estimates of maternal mortality. The goal in this paper is to provide public health policy makers an estimate to track recent trends in maternal mortality to help to elaborate better social and health to achieve SGD.

Keywords: Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Population projections, forecasts, and estimations, Mortality, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

See extended abstract.

  Presented in Session 80. Innovations in Methodology