Abstract: Introduction: Pregnancy, although being considered a physiological state, carries the risk of serious maternal morbidity and at times death. This is due to various complications that may occur during pregnancy, labor or thereafter. Maternal mortality is universally considered as human development indicator in a country and determines the health status of the people. Information on maternal mortality is required to determine this status and to set priorities for policy making and programmatic and operation research strategies. This study was conducted to determine the maternal mortality rate and associated epidemiological characteristics in a tertiary care hospital.
Method: A retrospective hospital-based study of 55 maternal deaths was conducted over a period of one and half year from January 2017 to June 2018. Maternal mortality rate, epidemiological factors were assessed and results were analyzed using percentage and proportion with the help of Microsoft Excel 2007.
Result: A total of 55 maternal deaths occurred per 10,413 live births in research period. Most maternal deaths occurred in the age group of 20–30 years (81.82%), and in multiparous women (76.36%). Maternal mortality rate (MMR) came out to be 528.18 per 100,000 live births.
Conclusion: Most maternal deaths are preventable by optimum utilization of existing maternal and child health care facilities and identifying the bottlenecks in health delivery system. Emphasis should be made to reduce the maternal mortality by early registration, regular ANC & PNC visit, early detection of complication & its prevention, early identification of high risk pregnancies and timely referral to higher center.