ANNUAL MATERNAL MORTALITY RATE APPROXIMATION FOR MALAWI USING THE MULTILAYER PERCEPTRON

This research article employs annual time series data on MMR for Malawi from 1985 to 2023 to predict future trends of MMR over the period 2024 to 2035. The forecast evaluation criteria of the applied model indicate that the ANN (12, 12, 1) model is stable. The neural network model projections revealed that MMR will remain very high throughout the out of sample period. Therefore, we encourage the government to adopt the suggested 5-fold policy prescription.