Determinants of preterm birth among women delivered in public hospitals of Western Ethiopia, 2020: Unmatched case-control study

Worldwide, preterm birth accounts for 1 million deaths of infants each year and 60% of these deaths occur in developing countries. In addition to the significant health consequences on the infant, preterm birth can lead to economic costs. There was a lack of study in western Ethiopia, and most of those studies conducted in other parts of a country were based on card review with a cross-sectional study design. The risk factors of preterm birth may vary from region to region within the same country due to variation in socioeconomic status and health care service coverage. Therefore, this study aimed to identify determinants of preterm birth in western Ethiopia. An institutional-based case-control study was conducted from February 15 to April 15, 2020, in western Ethiopia. The eligible 188 cases and 377 controls were randomly selected for this study. Cases were women who gave birth after 28 weeks and before 37 completed weeks of gestation, and controls were women who gave birth at and after 37 weeks of gestation from the first day of the last normal menstrual period. Data were collected by a structured interviewer-administered questionnaire. The collected data were entered into Epi info version 7 and exported to SPSS version 21 for analysis. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify determinants of preterm birth at P-value