Nepal Clean Home Delivery Kit: Evaluation of the Health Impact - Path

egardless of what the absolute rate is in the specific setting is. The relative risk is more
useful for general analysis, since the underlying rates may be affected by many other
factors and vary widely from one setting to another. All factors which had a significant
relationship with both kit use and cord infection were initially included in the logistic
regression models. Only those factors which had significant independent risks in the
model (i.e., whose 95% confidence intervals did not include 1.0) were retained in the
final model. For example, DISTRICT was no longer significant when INTERVIEWER was
included in the model and was, therefore, dropped from the model. Similarly, a variable
that grouped birth attendants into four categories (trained TBA, untrained TBA, family or
neighbor, health worker) was initially included in the model. There were no real
differences among the first three groups (once other more specific variables were
accounted for), and the elevated infection risk associated with health workers (RR=1.6,
95% C.I. of 0.78-3.4) was not statistically significant. The relative risks, as adjusted for
the confounding factors of week of interview, month, and interviewer, are shown in Table
11.
Table 11. Kit use and other risk factors for cord infection
Risk Factor Relative Risk 1 95% Confidence Interval
Kit vs. new blade, coin/nothing 1.3 (0.81, 1.9)
Kit vs. new blade, other surface 0.74 (0.22, 2.5)
Kit vs. boiled blade, coin/nothing 0.96 (0.63, 1.5)
Kit vs. boiled blade, other surface; other
2
blade, any surface
0.45 (0.25, 0.81)
Put on cord just after (vs. nothing):
Mustard oil 0.31 (0.07, 1.3)
Ash 1.4 (0.90, 2.2)
Herbals 0.78 (0.22, 2.8)
Dettol 0.67 (0.35, 1.3)
Antibiotic 0.93 (0.25, 3.4)
Other 3.8 (0.96, 15.1)
Don’t know 0.56 (0.24, 1.3)
Clean or no cloth vs. Dirty one 2 0.60 (0.43, 0.82)
Hands washed with soap before cutting
2
cord vs. not washed
0.58 (0.40, 0.84)
Hands washed with water before cutting
cord vs. not washed
0.78 (0.44, 1.4)
1
Adjusted for interview week, month, and interviewer.
2
p