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Spatial evaluation of pregnancy loss among child-bearing women in India

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Abstract

The present study identifies the prevalence, pattern & geographical distribution of pregnancy loss and its various determinants. The choropleth equal interval maps and local indicators of spatial association maps were used to investigate the locations requiring attention. Spatial regression techniques were used to investigate the factors associated with pregnancy losses across India using data derived from the fourth round of National Family Health Survey. A decision tree was constructed to investigate the interaction effect of the significant factors.The percentage of pregnancy loss in India is noted to be 14.3% (95% BCa confidence interval: 13.47, 14.79). The spatial autocorrelation coefficient (\(\rho = 0.61,~p < 0.001\)) indicated the spatial dependence in the data. Hotspots of response variable were observed in districts of Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, and Odisha. Locations, with high percentage of women who have attained education upto high school and above, women who did not want the pregnancy, and women whose family did not want more child, were likely to have increased percentage of pregnancy loss. Struggles in a womens life, family’s pressure and own desire to have child coupled with their education status are related to the pregnancy loss. Preventing the unplanned pregnancies will play a pivotal role in decreasing the pregnancy loss which further prevents maternal mortality and morbidity. Timely and adequate supplies of contraception in public health institutions particulary sub-centre, primary health centre should be ensured.

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Data availability

The data used in this study are available with the first and corresponding authors of this study and will be produced upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Mr. Rahul Singh (B.Tech, Mechanical Engineering) for proof reading this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Concurrent Measurement & Learning Unit, Bihar Technical Support Program, Care India, Saharsa, 855201, India

    Bhaskar Tiwary

  2. Department of Biostatistics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, 110029, India

    Nilima Nilima

  3. Data Management Unit, International Clinical Epidemiology Network, New Delhi, 110020, India

    Anup Kumar

  4. Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, 110016, India

    Siddharth Kaushik

  5. Hospital Administration, JNU Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Center, Jaipur, 302017, India

    Mohd. Aihatram Khan

  6. Lakhmi Chand Institute of Technology Group of Institutions, Bilaspur, 495220, India

    Piyush Kant Pandey

  7. Institute of Health Management Research, The IIHMR University, Jaipur, 302029, India

    Bhaskar Tiwary & Piyush Kant Pandey

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  1. Bhaskar Tiwary
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Contributions

BT conceptualized the study. AK extracted the data and was involved in the cleaning process. NN carried out statistical analysis and created the plots. BT, NN & SKwrote the manuscript. PKP and MAK did a critical review of the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Nilima Nilima.

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The article uses freely available secondary data obtained from http://rchiips.org under the National Data sharing and Accessibility Policy of Government of India. Hence an ethical clearance was not deemed necessary.

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Tiwary, B., Nilima, N., Kumar, A. et al. Spatial evaluation of pregnancy loss among child-bearing women in India. GeoJournal 87, 3815–3826 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-021-10464-9

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