VIJAYAWADA: In what could be a cause for concern, one in four babies in Vijayawada is born underweight.Doctors attribute the low birthweight to poor maternal health and mother’s nutrition, and lack of precaution during pregnancy.About 25% of the 10,842 childbirths analysed at city government hospital by a team of researchers fall under the low birthweight category.A baby is said to be of low birthweight if it is below 2,500 gram. Doctors suggest certain precautions to improve the birthweight as low birthweight is linked to severe health issues including risk of mortality.Stating that low birthweight is the “dominant risk factor for infant mortality and morbidity”, the researchers have identified various risk factors that cause low birthweight. The prevalence of low birthweight in the study conducted at the government general hospital in Vijayawada was 25.05%.The result of the study was published in the recent issue of Indian Journal of Applied Research. The study team comprised P Chandramohan, M Nishanth and J Sreenivasa Chowdary of Siddhartha Medical College. The team found 2,716 of the 10,842 infants were underweight.The factors identified by doctors for low birthweight included mothers below 20 years of age, maternal height of less than 145 cms, preconception weight less than 40 kg, maternal weight gain of less than 7 kg during pregnancy and anaemia.“The results of this study suggest that for reducing the low birthweight, maternal health programme should focus on maternal nutrition and nutritional education to facilitate better weight gain during pregnancy and discourage pregnancy at early age. Early identification of anaemia and antenatal iron folic acid supplementation services should be strengthened through good antenatal care,” the researchers said.The study also identified that apart from weight, many babies are born with a chest circumference of less than 27 cms and mid-arm circumference of less than 8 cms. “Chest circumference is a better surrogate marker for low birthweight than mid-arm circumference. These simple and reliable indicators for low birthweight can be introduced into the existing system of healthcare for usage by paramedical workers to detect low birthweight babies, so that they can be given special care and thus, neonatal mortality and morbidity can be reduced,” the study suggests.The suggestion gains significance as many deliveries take place at houses and the weight of the new born is rarely recorded for want of scales. The study also found that 39.6 % of low weight babies born were pre-term.

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