Maternal Health in Australia: Risk Factors and Analysis

Maternal Health in Australia 1
MATERNAL HEALTH IN AUSTRALIA
Name
Course Number
Date
Faculty Name
Maternal Health in Australia

Maternal Health in Australia 2
1 Introduction
Maternal health is a major concern in the whole world among other health issues. The
government among other organisations such as the World Health Organisation and private health
institutions are committed to improving the health of the citizens. A lot of funds have been
directed in the health docket to fight these health issues, hence making a healthy nation. Maternal
health has been among the main health concerns of public health because it is among the major
determinants development of a country. In this case, a strong health system set would reduce
pregnancy-related issues, which significantly decreases child mortality, which is a double
achievement for the society.
Health data was extracted from the world development indicators database which was last
updated in March 2018. This was done by pre-possessing data and extracting data which meets
our criteria. Only Australian data will be analysed to evaluate the risk of maternal death based on
factors such as the number of maternal deaths and the amount spend on health as a percentage of
the GDP. The data was extracted using MS Excel by filtering data labels with ‘health’ and
‘death’ keywords which returned 17 variables which are related to health and deaths related to
health.
In this paper, data will be loaded into R software for exploratory and advanced analysis.
The exploratory data analysis will include one variable analysis which includes 3 variables –
whose descriptive will be obtained and appropriate graphs reported. In addition, two variable
analysis will be conducted and appropriate plots generated to present the data effectively. Also,
cluster analysis and linear regression analysis will be done and reported in the advanced analysis
section. Journal articles are used to reference ideas and facts included in the report.
2 Data Setup
The main data file from World Development Indicators was processed in MS Excel by
extracting the required variables and presenting them in a tidy dataset format, which includes a
variable presentation in column format. The data was also saved in CSV format to allow easy
and effective upload into R software for analysis. A metadata was created to show the
description of the coded variable names that allows effective reference and a better
understanding of the analysis. The R system workspace was changed to the folder with the
dataset and it was imported using the code below. Also, the required packages were loaded using

Maternal Health in Australia 3
the library function. The variables include cluster and fpc which allow cluster analysis and
visualisation. The data characteristics include in this analysis are for Australia only.
setwd("E:/Documents/745360")
mydata <- read.csv("mydata.csv")
library(cluster); library(fpc)
dim(mydata)
3 Exploratory Data Analysis
3.1 One-Variable Analysis
3.1.1 Lifetime Risk of Maternal Death
summary(SH.MMR.RISK.ZS)
## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max. NA's
## 0.01152 0.01280 0.01320 0.01358 0.01490 0.01550 1
boxplot(SH.MMR.RISK.ZS,col = 5,
main = "Lifetime Risk of Maternal Death", outline = T, names = T)

Maternal Health in Australia 4
Figure 1: A Boxplot of Lifetime risk of maternal death
The lifetime risk of maternal death was presented as a probability and analysis shows that
the least value was 1.152% and a maximum of 1.552%. The mean of the risk was 1.358% and a
median value of 1.32%. These two statistics are not equal, indicating that the risk of maternal
death was not normally distributed. The boxplot shows that the risk of maternal death is skewed
to the right – which is an indication that most of the years from 1995 to 2014 had risk values
which were below than the mean value.
3.1.2 Number of maternal deaths within 42 days
summary(SH.MMR.DTHS)
## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max. NA's
## 19.00 20.00 20.00 20.05 21.00 21.00 1
hist(SH.MMR.DTHS,col = 5,
main = "Number of Maternal Deaths within 42 days", xlab = "Maternal
Deaths")