Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Related to Hypertensive Disorders During Pregnancy : A Socio-Demographic view in Colombia.

Sammanfattning: Reducing maternal mortality is number five in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Preeclampsia is a particular form of hypertension during the pregnancy period that can cause maternal deaths. In Colombia, is the first cause of morbidity and maternal mortality (Serrano-Díaz & Díaz-Martinez 2005). This study attempts to determine how the socio-demographic causes that are involved in the development in order to contribute to the description of the environmental causes, more specifically to determine if socio-demographic factors influence the development of the disease. This study is based on data from two sources especially, one from the National Department of Statistics (DANE) or Statistics Colombia to give a better contextualization about the rates and tendencies of the Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) on ICD-10 codes related with obstetric risks. The other called GenPE project (Genetics and Preeclampsia), which has been developed in Colombia and it has had a great impact on the genetic factors but contains socio-demographic information. For this purpose some statistical robustness checks as chi-square tests, logistic regression and multilevel models to determine which is the way to conceptualize the problem. The findings stress on more prenatal care early in the pregnancy (p<0.01) as well as the intensity or number of controls (p<0.01) to decrease the risk of preeclampsia. Besides, familiar background regarding hypertensive disorders is still important in the development of the disease (p<0.01), which gives information as an environmental and genetic contribution.