Mathematical Theory and Modeling www.iiste.org ISSN 2224-5804 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0522 (Online) Vol.3, No.2, 2013 30 Poisson Regression Modeling For Incidence of Maternal Deaths In Ghana Smart A. Sarpong 1* Abena K. Brobbey 2 1. School of Graduate Studies, Research and Innovations, Kumasi Polytechnic, P.O Box 854, Kumasi, Ghana 2. Medical Laboratory Department, Princess Marie Louise Children’s Hospital, P.O. Box GP 122 Accra - Ghana * E-mail of the corresponding author: sarpongbest@gmail.com ABSTRACT The death of a woman while performing her naturally mandated duty of childbirth remains sad and sensitive to every nation worldwide. This paper seeks to explore the application of Poisson models in the study of incidence of Maternal Deaths at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital – Kumasi, Ghana. Analyses were based on data available at the Obstetrics & Gynecology directorate of the Hospital for the period 2000-2010. We found that within the eleven (11) year period, a total of 1,223 maternal deaths occurred with the years 2008 and 2009 recording the highest deaths of 138 and 144 respectively. Also, the mean incidence of maternal deaths remained approximately the same over the period. The results also show that compared to year 2010, the incidence of maternal death was significantly high in 2004, 2005 as well as 2008. We conclude that management and government reevaluate all existing intervention programs for reducing maternal deaths since they seem not to have yielded the expected results over the past eleven years (2000 - 2010) reference to this teaching hospital. Key words: Poisson Regression Model, Bio-statistics, KATH AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENT to Prof. N.N.N Nsowah-Nuamah for his initial review which has help shape many aspects of this paper. 1.0 INTRODUCTION Global attention began to focus more seriously on maternal mortality when in 1985; Rosenfield and Maine (1985) published a thought-provoking article 'Maternal Mortality - a neglected tragedy - where is the M in MCH?' and alerted the world to the fact that many developing countries were neglecting this important problem. Another significant contribution to the crusade against maternal mortality was the WHO (1986) publication, 'Maternal Mortality: helping women off the road to death.' All these led to the Safe Motherhood Conference in Nairobi, Kenya in 1987 as well as subsequent conferences up to the millennium summit in 2000. Globally, 529,000 women die each year from pregnancy-related complications, of which about 90% occur in developing countries, the worst affected being West Africa, including Ghana (UN Millennium Project, 2006).It is estimated that over half of these deaths are in sub-Saharan Africa, with maternal mortality ratio of 910 deaths per 100,000 live births (WHO, 2006).Ghana’s maternal mortality ratio (MMR) declined from 560 deaths out of 100,000 live births in 2005, to