Maternal Postpartum Hospital Readmissions and Associated Factors Among Women Who Delivered at Bugando Medical Centre Mwanza Tanzania

<i>Background: </i>Maternal postpartum hospital readmissions are of importance concern in the field of maternal health with most of maternal deaths occurred includes those women who were readmitted in the hospital after initial admission for delivery. There is no information on the reasons for maternal postpartum hospital readmissions and factors associated with their readmissions. The proposed study was set to examine maternal readmissions and associated factors so as to take specific preventive measures among women who delivered at Bugando Medical Centre. <i>Methodology</i>: This was a 4-years retrospective descriptive study. Patient files (case notes) of women who were readmitted within 42 days after discharge from initial delivery admission between 1<sup>st</sup>January 2014 to 31<sup>st</sup> December 2017 and meet the inclusion criteria were included. <i>Results</i>: There were 29664 deliveries in the four years of the study, 73.6% (n =21837) were by vagina deliveries and 26.4% (n=7827) by caesarean section. During this period 285 cases of maternal postpartum hospital readmission were identified, making a readmission rate of 9.6 cases per 1000 deliveries (1%). Two hundred and fifty two case files (88.4%) were available for analysis. The highest indication of maternal postpartum hospital readmissions was puerperal sepsis 50.8% (n=128). There was an identified association between type of labour and MPHR with puerperal sepsis. There were five maternal deaths among the cases, giving a case fatality rate (CFR) of 1.7%.<i>Conclusion:</i> The rate of maternal postpartum hospital readmission in this study was relatively low as compared to other studies. Majority of the study population were readmitted with puerperal sepsis and elective caesarean sections as type of labour were less associated with maternal readmission with puerperal sepsis.