Modeling Maternal Mortality Rates in South Sudan

The maternal mortality rate (MMR) and the maternal deaths (MDs) in South Sudan is one of the highest in the world.The paper explores and compares the trends in HIV+/AIDS and Non-HIV+/AIDS related MMR. The results indicated that there is a declining trend in MMR. However, the decline in HIV+/AIDS MMR is much slower than the decline in Non-HIV+ /AIDS MMR. The paper also aims for the first time to explore and compare the application of Log Linear and Poisson regression models to estimate MDs in South Sudan. Accuracy criteria such as coefficient of determination, Mean error are used to compare the predicting error of these models. The results show that Log Linear can model the MMR much better than Poisson.