A Retrospective Analysis of Socio Demographic and Maternal Factors Affecting Low Birth Weight at St. Theresa's Hosptial, Nkoranza

Abstract

Background: Globally, it is estimated that in excess of 20 million newborns were delivered with low birth weight (LBW) and contributed more than 80% of neonatal mortality. Sub-Saharan Africa is the second continent (14.3%) to Asia (18.3%) with the highest prevalence of low birth weight babies. Objective: The general objective of the study was to examine the factors affecting low birth weight (LBW) at St Theresa’s Hospital, Nkoranza. Method: This study adopted a facility-based retrospective cross-sectional design to assess the factors that are linked to low birth weight at the St Theresa’s Catholic Hospital, Nkoranza. Due to the outbreak of Covid-19 and associated ethical concerns and time limitations, a retrospective study was appropriate because it allowed the researcher to retrospectively examine the factors affecting low birth weight without having to conduct a prospective cohort study that would have involved recruiting and following up with pregnant women until delivery. To identify factors associated with low birth weight, bivariate analysis using chi-square corrected (Yates) test and Fisher exact test (for situations where the value in the cells of the two-by-two table was less than 5) were done. Those variables that showed p-values of less than 0.05 were assumed to be statistically associated with birth weight. To determine the strength of the associations between independent variables and the outcome (birth weight) variable, those variables found to have p-value less than 0.05 in the bivariate analysis were fitted into multiple logistic regression models where the effect of potential confounders were adjusted for. Odds ratios with their corresponding 95% of confidence intervals (CI) were computed and variables having p-value less than 0.05 in the multiple logistic regression models were considered significantly associated with the dependent variable. Results: The results showed that 49% of the women were aged between 26-35 forming the majority group. The results also showed that 78.8% of the women had at least basic level of education whiles 21.2% of them did not have any form of education. The analysis further revealed that prevalence of low birth weight at the St Theresa Catholic hospital was 9%. This means that, about 9 low birth weight are recorded out of every 100 deliveries at the hospital for the period under review. The findings show that when compared to mothers who had no level of education, those who had at least primary level of education have reduced odds of having low birth weight babies (cOR = 0.17; CI=0.03-0.57; p=0.021). It further shows that the odds of a first child being born low birth weight was 0.5 times (cOR= 0.45; CI=0.13-0.83; p=0.003). After the potential cofounders were controlled for in the logistic multiple regression, the odds increased marginally to 0.51 times (aOR=0.51; CI=0.21-0.85; p=0.001) but still protective. Conclusion: The study revealed that parity, age of mothers and education status of the mother are significantly associated with low birth weight. It however indicates that women aged between 18-25 are at greater risk of having low birth weight. Measures targeting teenage pregnancies should be pursued to avoid early births.