Clinical Characteristics and Causes of Perinatal Death Among Women Who Delivered at SekouToure Regional Referral Hospital, Mwanza Region, Northwestern Tanzania

<i>Background</i>: Perinatal deaths and neonatal deaths are major public health concern worldwide. They are unexpected tragedy which brings bad experience to the pregnant mothers and the families in general. Occurrences of these deaths may be used to evaluate the quality of obstetric care given to pregnant women in the hospital. They shows good quality of obstetric care when they are low in number. Therefore, more efforts must be directed in preventing these deaths. <i>Methods</i>: This was a one-year retrospective descriptive hospital based study conducted in one of the tertiary regional referral hospital. Women who had perinatal deaths between the studied periods and meet the inclusion criteria were included. <i>Results</i>: There were 7336 deliveries in the study, 81.1% (n =5953) had vagina deliveries and 18.9% (n=1383) had Caesarean section. Total of 169 cases of perinatal deaths identified, making a rate of perinatal deaths of 23 cases per 1000 deliveries (2.3%). Among perinatal death 40% (n=67) were early neonatal deaths and there was an identified association between referral from lower health facilities with early neonatal deaths. <i>Conclusion</i>: The rate of perinatal deaths in this study was relatively low compared to other studies. This reflect the quality of obstetrics care pregnant women received in our facility. And most of these women with early neonatal deaths were referred to our facility from lower health facilities with complications.