Iodine deficiency among pregnant mothers and their neonates from a public health point of view

A cross sectional study of a random sample of 300 pregnant mothers was conducted to investigate the problem of iodine deficiency during pregnancy and delivery among mothers and their neonates. The prevalence of iodine deficiency among pregnant mothers was 35%, 60% of them were not educated compared with 33.8% of the normal pregnant women. The illiteracy rate was higher among husbands of mothers suffering from iodine deficiency disorder [IDD] than among the normal group. Also, higher percentages of normal pregnant mothers were working women and high percentages of their husbands were practicing skilled or governmental jobs than IDD group. A statistical significant relationship was found between high parity, frequency of stillbirths, recurrent abortion and iodine deficiency among mothers. As regard the dietary history, a significant relation was noticed between iodine deficiency and inadequate intake of iodine rich food and the frequent intake of goitrogenic food

pattern of feeding among infants [6 months-2 years] attending MCH center

This study was conducted on a systematic random sample of 400 mothers having infants below 2 years of age attending MCH center of El-Mahkama for vaccination. The mean age of the mothers was 24 +/- 5 years and for infants it was 16.5 +/- 2.5 months. The majority of women [97.2%] started breast feeding, however, only 74.5% of them successfully continued. The mean duration of breast feeding among illiterate mothers was 17.3 +/- 5.8 months, whereas it was 11.5 +/- 5.1 months among highly educated mothers. The main reasons for trend away from breast feeding before 24 months in this study was the wrongly thinking of the mothers that the period of infant's lactation is enough [32.8%] followed by workload of the mothers [21.1%], while scanty milk represented 9.4% only. The study showed that the lower social class tends to postpone weaning process beyond 6 months compared with middle and high social classes which usually start weaning practices earlier. Stepwise regression analysis was done for analyzing the factors that were assumed to affect weaning practice and revealed that social class, maternal education, sex of the baby, birth order and lastly the living in nuclear or extended families were the most important factors arranged, respectively, according to their relative importance