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PART 2 CHAPTER IX 2.9.1.
Fertility The age at first menstruation and the beginning of climacteric age determine the reproductive period of women. The natural fertility rate corresponds to 10-12 live born children in 25 years of their reproductive life span. In this survey sample, the great majority of women (89%) have previously been pregnant and about 7% were pregnant at the time of survey-interview. However, 59 women (4.2%) had never been pregnant (Figure 2.9.1.). The majority of women (85%) have had more than one pregnancy during their life span and an average number of conceptions was about 5.3 per woman (Mean = 5.3±4.74). The frequency distribution of women according to the number of conceptions is shown in Table 2.9.1.
2.9.2.
Pregnancy Outcomes A total number of 7415 conceptions was mentioned by the survey respondents but only 2910 (39.2%) had the outcome in live births. The most frequent pregnancy outcome was induced abortion (51.2%) as demonstrated in Figure 2.9.2. and Table 2.9.2. In both the last and previous marriages/unions the most frequent pregnancy outcome was induced abortion (Figure 2.9.3.). The majority of survey respondents ever have had live births (82%). On the average, there were about 2 live births per couple. The main statistics related to the number of births is the following:
Figure 2.9.4. describes the frequency distribution of the survey sample by the number of live births. About 8% of women never had live births, and 18% have had only one. The proportion of women, which had history of stillbirth, was (1.9%). There were 27 stillbirths in total or about 2 stillbirths per 100 respondents (Mean=0.02±0.14). The stillbirths constitute 0.9% of the total 2937 births (Figure 2.9.5.). Three hundred and thirty six women (24%) reported a history of at least one spontaneous abortion. One hundred eleven women (8%) reported more than one spontaneous abortion and 35 women (2.5%) reported more than two (Figure 2.9.6. and Table 2.9.3.). There were 539 spontaneous abortions in total or about 38 per 100 respondents (Mean=0.38±0.95). The recurrent spontaneous abortion (more than 2) to total spontaneous abortion ratio was about 10% (Figure 2.9.7.).
2.9.3.
Childhood Survival In this study we found that 103 women (8%) out of 1290 who had live born children have had at least one deceased child by the time of the survey-interview (Figure 2.9.8. and Table 2.9.4.). One hundred twenty two (4.1%) out of total number of 2937 live born children of survey respondents died. By the time of this survey there were in total 2708 living children:
Infant mortality remains the largest percentage of overall childhood death with a rate of 79.5%. The cumulative neonatal mortality rate was quite high (41%). Table 2.9.5. and Figure 2.9.9. summarizes childhood mortality by age of deceased children. Indicators of childhood mortality:
Table 2.9.6. summarizes the proportion of survey respondents by family size. The proportion of childless women was 8%.
2.9.4.
Incidence of Congenital Birth Defects There were a total of 25 women (2%) who had at least one child with congenital birth defects. Among those children with birth defect 16 (64%) were still alive at the time of the study (Table 2.9.7.). Table 2.9.8. shows the incidence of birth defects related to total births. The proportion of children born with congenital birth defect among total 2937 live born children was about 1%. The most frequent types of congenital malformations were defects of the gastro-intestial (16%), cardiovascular (8%) systems and Down’s syndrome (8%). |