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Perinatal mortality refers to fetal deaths (stillbirths) plus infant deaths which occur shortly after birth. Perinatal mortality, calculated by combining stillbirths and early neonatal deaths (age at death less than 7 days), is a useful population health status measure since the causes of stillbirths and early neonatal deaths are frequently so similar. Provincial perinatal deaths ranged between 800 and 850 deaths in the late 1960s. (combined data from Tables 1 and 4). These numbers had dropped to roughly 500 or fewer by the 1990s, and to less than 400 perinatal deaths in both 1998 and 1999. Perinatal mortality rates, which were slightly more than 25 per 1,000 total births in 1965, decreased to roughly 10 per 1,000 total births by 1996. The graph of perinatal morality rates between 1965 and 1999 shows a dramatic downward trend even though the rates did not always decline from year to year.
A broader measure of perinatal mortality, stillbirths plus neonatal deaths (age at death less than 28 days), can also be used as a health status measure. The number of neonatal deaths plus stillbirths declined from 900 in 1965 to less than 400 in 1999. A graph of the rates of neonatal deaths plus stillbirths per 1,000 total births shows a similar pattern to the graph of perinatal mortality rates for the same period. The similar trends in these two health status measures reflects the large proportion of infant deaths that occur in the first week of life.
[Click here to download a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet of the above table]
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