Antenatal care attendance and low birth weight of institutional births in sub-Saharan Africa
Weyori, Alirah Emmanuel, Seidu, Abdul-Aziz, Aboagye, Richard Gyan, Holmes, Francis Arthur, Okyere, Joshua, and Ahinkorah, Bright Opoku (2022) Antenatal care attendance and low birth weight of institutional births in sub-Saharan Africa. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 22 (1). 283.
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Abstract
Background: Low birth weight (LBW) remains a major health problem that affects newborns worldwide. However, there has been growing evidence that antenatal care (ANC) is associated with LBW. Yet, there is a dearth of research investigating the association between ANC attendance and LBW in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study examined the association between the number of ANC visits and LBW using data from 10 sub-Saharan African countries.
Methods: This study pooled data from the recent Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) of 10 sub-Saharan African countries conducted from 2018 to 2020. A total of 33,585 women aged 15–49 who had live births in the five years preceding the survey were included in this study. Bivariable and multivariable multilevel regression models were fitted to show the association between the number of ANC visits and LBW. Crude odds ratio (cOR) and adjusted odds ratio (aOR) at 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used in presenting the results of the regression analysis.
Results: The pooled prevalence of LBW was 5.7%. The highest prevalence of LBW was recorded in Gambia (7.2%) with the lowest found in Sierra Leone (2.9%). In terms of eight or more ANC visits, the overall prevalence was 14.5%. Nigeria had the highest prevalence of eight or more ANC visits (43.5%) with the lowest in Rwanda (0.2%). We found a statistically significant association between the number of ANC visits and LBW. Mothers who had eight or more ANC visits were less likely to have LBW children compared to mothers who had less than eight ANC visits [cOR = 0.66; CI = 0.55 – 0.79] and this persisted after controlling for the covariates [aOR = 0.68; CI = 0.56 – 0.82]. Covariates associated with LBW were maternal age, marital status, level of education, age of child, and wealth index.
Conclusion: This study has shown a statistically significant association between ANC and LBW in SSA, with women who had eight or more ANC visits being at lower risks of giving birth to children with LBW. We found that eight or more ANC attendance was a protective factor against LBW in SSA. Therefore, it is important for sub-Saharan African countries with low prevalence of eight or more ANC attendance and high LBW prevalence to channel their efforts towards promoting more ANC attendance.
| Item ID: | 74437 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1471-2393 |
| Keywords: | Antenatal care, Institutional births, Low birth weight, Sub-Saharan African countries |
| Copyright Information: | © The Author(s) 2022. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
| Date Deposited: | 14 Oct 2022 03:07 |
| FoR Codes: | 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4204 Midwifery > 420402 Models of care and place of birth @ 50% 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4203 Health services and systems > 420310 Health surveillance @ 50% |
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