The prevalence of low birthweight infants: national nutrition survey-2017 / Монголын Анагаах Ухаан

ABSTRACT

Background@#Weight at birth is a good indicator of the mother’s health and nutrition status during gestation and a child’s chances for survival, growth, long-term health, and psychosocial development. Low birth weight (defined as less than 2500 grams) poses a range of serious health risks for children. @*Objective@#To assess the prevalence of low birth weights (LBW).@*Materials and Methods@#The NNS V was implemented in 21 provinces (aimags) in 4 economic regions (Central, Eastern, Khangai, Western) and the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. A total of 2250 children aged 0-59 months. Given the regional differences in lifestyle and nutrition status, target populations were stratified into 5 strata based on economic region and Ulaanbaatar with equal samples drawn from each stratum using a cluster-randomized sampling design. For the selection of households in urban areas, the process involved first selecting 30 khoroos (clusters), then khesegs, and then households with a child 0-59 months of age.@*Ethical considerations @#The survey methodology was discussed at the Scientific Committee of the Public Health Institute (recently named by National Center for Public Health) and granted the PHI Directors Order on 28th June, 2016. Ethics approval for conducting the NNS V, was obtained from the Medical Ethics Committee under the Mongolian Ministry of Health. @*Results@#Almost all (99.5%) children in the sample were weighed at birth with 5.0% weighing less than 2500 grams at birth and 12.6% weighing over 4000 grams at birth. The prevalence of low birth weight was slightly higher among girls than boys, however high birth weight was much more common in boys (15.9%) compared to girls (9.5%). Prevalence of low birth weight was highest in Western region (9.6%) and the poorest households (7.8%) while the prevalence of high birth weight was highest in Ulaanbaatar (13.8%) and wealthiest households1 (16.4%). High birth weight was more than double among children of overweight (17.5%) and obese (17.3%) mothers compared to children of normal weight (8.4%) or underweight (7.0%) mothers. Among singleton births, women <29 years of age had higher LBW rates than did those 30-39 years of age in both years, irrespective of birth order. LBW rate was more than double among mothers in kazak ethnic groups (13.8%).@*Conclusions@#The younger age of the mother was more likely to develop low birth weight, and it was twice as high among mothers in Kazak ethnic groups. Therefore, adolescents and women of reproductive age needed to improve the health education and to identify the causes and risk factors of low birth weight among mothers in Kazak ethnic groups.