Low birth weight among term newborns in Wolaita Sodo town, South Ethiopia: a facility based cross-sectional study

Abstract

BackgroundIn low income countries, many low birth weight newborns often miss the chance for survival sooner or later. Others who survive would also face increased risks in later life. Though not adequately documented in Ethiopia, maternal factors pose the main risk. This study was aimed to estimate the proportion of low birth weight among term singletons without congenital malformations and factors associated with it in Wolaita Sodo town in South Ethiopia.MethodsWe did a facility based survey involving 432 postpartum women with their term newborns. Data was collected through face to face interview from March to April in 2016. The outcome measure was newborn birth weight. Bivariate logistic regression was applied to look for crude associations. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was done to adjust for potential confounders to identify independent predictors. Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI), and statistical significance at P < 0.05 were reported.ResultsThe proportion of term low birth weight was 8.1% in the study area. Women who had less education (AOR = 6.23; 95% CI = 1.68, 23.1), house wives (AOR = 5.85; 95% CI = 1.40, 24.3) and not frequently consuming fruits during pregnancy (AOR 11.3; 95% CI = 1.98, 64.9) had a higher risk of having term low birth weight newborns. We documented a lesser odds of those from rural settings to have low birth weight newborns as compared to their counter urban equivalents (AOR = 0.06; 95% CI = 0.006, 0.6).ConclusionsDietary counselling to pregnant mothers specific diet and nutrition including fruit diets in particular might contribute to reduce the risk of term low birth weight. Better education might have enabled women to prefer diets and their job engagements might also have capacitated them to decide on dietary preferences.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12884-018-1789-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Determinants of Low Birth Weight among Newborns Delivered at Public Hospitals in Sidama Zone, South Ethiopia: Unmatched Case-Control Study

“…This finding was consistent with studies conducted in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe [27,32,33]. But it is inconsistent with a study conducted in another part of Ethiopia [13]. This discrepancy might be due to differences in the study settings where our study area covered both urban and rural hospitals and the latter study was conducted in an urban setting where a teaching and referral hospital was also included.…”

“…The magnitude of LBW varies across regions within countries [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17].…”

Performance of an adapted household food insecurity access scale in measuring seasonality in household food insecurity in rural Ethiopia: a cohort analysis

“…However, when a woman was unavailable, any adult who was present and ate food in the household in the previous day was asked. Women are commonly responsible for food preparation and child feeding roles in their households in the study area [23,35,36]. Moreover, the women commonly remain at home more often than any other family member in this area.…”

Prevalence of and socioeconomic gradient in low birth weight in Ethiopia: further analysis of the 2016 demographic and health survey data

“…However, there is a dearth of evidence derived from methodologically rigorous studies on whether socioeconomic gradient exists in LBW in Ethiopia. Some literatures have looked at the relation between SES and LBW [25][26][27][28], but without looking into whether the observed association has shown gradients along the continuum of the SES. Further, all of these studies covered small geographical locations in the country without showing how LBW was related with SES nationally.…”