Yemen Observer: http://www.yobserver.com
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Sports, Health & Lifestyle
Written By: Thuria Ghaleb
Article Date: Jul 1, 2008 - 4:11:24 AM
Low Birth Weight (LBW) babies are still a problem in Yemen, great enough to trigger public health action, a new study has said. Human and medical costs are extremely high to save LWB infants and maintain their health in the subsequent years.
LBW has been defined by the World Health Organization as weight at birth of less than 2,500g. It is observed that infants weighting less than 2,500g are approximately 20 times more likely to die than other heavier babies.
The study that revealed this data was conducted by researchers at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences in Sana’a University, and it detected the attitudes of mothers who gave birth to LBW babies during the period from August to November 2007 in Sana’a. It was supervised by Professor Ahmed al-Haddad who is the Head of Community Medicine Department, and it included 200 births at the Al-Thawra and Al-Sabeen hospitals.
More than 20 million infants are born around the world with LBW; around 96 percent of them are found in developing countries. According to the Family Survey conducted in 2003 by UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO), the rate of infant mortality in Yemen reached to 82 percent. It also shows that the maternal and neonatal mortality accounts for about 40 percent of all deaths under five years old.
LBW is associated with impaired immune function, poor cognitive development, and high risks of developing recurrent respiratory and gastrointestinal problems, as well as chronic changes in the central nervous system (cerebral palsy). Moreover LBW infants who survive may have an increased risk and liability to hypertension, type II diabetes and obstructive lung disease in adulthood.
Many factors related to the infant, the mother or the physical environment, play an important role in determining the birth weight. The study found that the majority of mothers (48 percent) who give birth to LBW babies suffer from certain diseases during pregnancy, which lead to the intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR). Mothers suffering from anemia represent 32 percent of all surveyed mothers while hypertensive mothers’ infants represent 21 percent, the study found.
It is also found that the rate of mothers smoking during pregnancy was 12 percent while the non-smokers represented just 2 percent. Around 54 percent of the study’s mothers were passive smokers of their husbands’ cigarettes during pregnancy, and 24 percent were qat-chewing mothers, according to the study.
Around 40 percent of women surveyed do not receive the necessary prenatal care during pregnancy. Various factors prevent mothers from getting prenatal care, such as the mother’s education.
The study finally recommended encouraging people, especially pregnant women, to adopt recommendations related to food diets, increasing the coverage of prenatal care, linking between the existing health care facilities and the community, paying more attention to women, especially pregnant ones, to produce healthy babies.
The study was conducted by Yossra al-Hammady, Seham al-Shaia’a, Yossra al-Ahdal, Nawal al-Jwaity, Ebtisam al-Khazan, Soltan al-Qufaily, Amal Ja’afar, Mohanad al-Hasany, Qutaiba Ahmed and Baseem al-Absy.