Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Research Article

Maternal Risk Factors Associated with Low Birth Weight Neonates in a Tertiary Care Hospital, Northern India

Gagan Agarwal^1*, Sartaj Ahmad², Kapil Goel³, Vijay Kumar¹, Parul Goel⁴, Meenal Garg⁵ and Ajay Punj¹

¹Department of Pediatrics, Subharti Medical College, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India

²Department of Medical Sociology, Subharti Medical College, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India

³Department of Community Medicine, Subharti Medical College, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India

⁴Department of Biochemistry, Subharti Medical College, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India

⁵OBG AIIMS, New Delhi, India

Corresponding Author:

Gagan Agarwal
Assistant Professor
Department of Pediatrics
Subharti Medical College
Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India
E-mail: drgagan15@gmail.com

Received Date: August 01, 2012; Accepted Date: October 26, 2012; Published Date: October 29, 2012

Citation: Gagan A, Sartaj A, Kapil G, Vijay Kumar, Parul G, et al. (2012) Maternal Risk Factors Associated with Low Birth Weight Neonates in a Tertiary Care Hospital, Northern India. J Community Med Health Educ 2:177. doi: 10.4172/2161-0711.1000177

Copyright: © 2012 Gagan A, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Low birth weight is influenced by many socio-economic factors like habitat, urban or rural, education, birth order, substance abuse by mother, religion and caste, age of mother nutritional status of mother, Body Mass Index, Hemoglobin level etc., quality of ante-natal care received (ANC) and spacing of pregnancies. Low birth weight babies pose challenge to the families and communities. They contribute major share in perinatal and neonatal mortality and also towards mental, physical and development challenges in pediatric population. Objective: To assess the impact of maternal social factors on the birth weight of newborn. Study setting: This study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital attached to Subharti medical college of Meerut District. Study design: Hospital based Cross sectional study. Study population: 325 women delivering live infants in the study setting. Study period: Six months i.e. from January 2011 to June 2011. Material and methods: All 325 mothers who delivered live infants in a tertiary care hospital attached to Subharti medical college, Meerut District were interviewed. Data was collected on a structured, pre-designed and pre-tested questionnaire. Statistical analysis: Data was entered in Microsoft Excel and the results were expressed as proportions. Results: The overall prevalence of LBW neonates was 32.3%. Majority (71.42%) of mothers was living in rural areas and 52.39% of the mothers belonged to joint families. 52.39% of the mothers were illiterate. Majority of mothers (76.19%) were housewives and their socio-economic status was IVth class (47.61%). The highest prevalence of LBW was found among mothers aged <18 years (42.86%), addicted to tobacco chewing (53.33%) and smoking (33.33%). Among mothers with pre pregnancy weight was less than 40 kg seen in 80.96%. Prevalence was seen (47.61%) of LBW was inversely proportional to the 6.0-8.0 gm Hemoglobin level and Primiparous mothers was found to be (42.86 %) and in parity of >5 (23.80%). Conclusion: Birth weight remained an important factor affecting the neonatal infant and childhood mortality and morbidity. Low birth weight babies are more likely to have disabilities in four of developmental delay, poor growth and mental disabilities. For reducing the prevalence of low birth weight, public health strategy needs to focus attention on better maternal nutrition and education.

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