Introduction: Malnutrition remains a childhood scourge in Sub Saharan Africa, Southern Africa, Zimbabwe and in the Insiza District, in particular. With its rich mineral (gold) deposits, robust animal husbandry agricultural industry, varied ecosystems and tourist attraction sites, the district has great potential support self-sufficiency of its population. However, there is a cause of concern as <5-year-olds malnutrition and stunting remain a threat to their lives. The maternal contributions to malnutrition was investigated to explicate underlying attributes of the condition.
Materials and Methods: A mixed method approach, where both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used to prompt and describe in-depth caregivers’ involvement in elements associated with malnutrition and stunting among the <5-year-olds. The quantitative data collection allowed for the quantification of certain maternal attributes on malnutrition on <5-year-olds. Both probability and purposive sampling were used in the study.
Results: Maternal associated factors were observed to contribute towards malnutrition amongst infants in Insiza District. Majority respondents with malnourished <5-year-olds attended FANC (95%), however, late at 7-9 months (38%), at 4-6 months (37%) while 25% were early at 1-3months of pregnancy. For post-natal care, majority of women (77%) visited the health facility as per the stated dates while most male partners (83%) did not accompany their partners to FANC visits. The majority of children were breastfed (97%) with majority initiating the process within the hour of birth 93.1% and 86% not exclusively breastfed. Knowledge of two breastfeeding benefits was 53% prevalent, 27% knew more than two and 20% knew one. The respondents travelled 5-10 kM (50%), 15% >10 kM and 13% stayed within 2 kM. Most children did not receive immunization (56.7%).
Conclusion: The respondents cited that the healthy facility is too far from the furthest village, religious practices, less milk produced by the mother as reasons on maternal factors which contribute to malnutrition. The community knows benefits of breastfeeding but are not practicing exclusive breastfeeding with complementary feeding within six months of birth due to lack of dietary diversity. Immunization was not practiced by the majority respondents.
Introduction: Expectant mothers are recommended and encouraged to book for focused antenatal care on or before the 12th week of pregnancy or within the first trimester to prevent or manage pregnancy-associated challenges. Booking late is when a pregnant woman reports for focused antenatal care for the first time after the first trimester. Focused antennal care is an individualized and quality care provided to pregnant woman for good outcomes. Antenatal care registers at Hartcliffe Polyclinic indicated that the majority of pregnant women were booking late for antenatal care which means they booked after the first trimester against the recommendations. Booking late in pregnancy suggests missed antenatal care as the woman is unlikely to have the recommended visits required of that pregnancy. Without focused antenatal care, the wellbeing of the mother and in-utero child may be potentially to be negatively impacted. This study aims to establish the major factors that lead to late booking for focused antenatal care. Unmasking these factors may be an important precursor-step which may provide insight and trigger thoughts around mitigating strategies, which potentially will promote early booking for focused antenatal care services.
Methods: Fifty pregnant women, who had booked late for focused antenatal care, were randomly selected to participate in the study. Questionnaires were used to collect data from the participants and quantitative methods were used for data analysis.
Results: The majority of the pregnant women were not aware of the correct time of booking for focused antenatal care and were not aware of the recommended number of clinic visits per pregnancy. The major factors suggested to lead to late-booking were financial challenges, attitude of health personnel, quality of health service, further to cultural and religious beliefs.
Conclusion: Lack of knowledge, age, level of education, marital status, parity, financial difficulties, bad attitude and some cultural beliefs were noted to be the main drivers of late booking. It is envisaged that in future, if these main factors are addressed, potentially an increase in pregnant women registering early for FANC may proportionally be achieved.
This study focuses on low-birth-weight (LBW) in Nigeria. The main objective is to obtain the life table probability of a mother giving birth to a low-birth-weight child, which may be relevant in assessing the progress of Sustainable Development Goals in Nigeria. The descriptive statistics and method of life table analysis were applied to the dataset on birth weights from the Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys (NDHS), 1990 to 2013. The result shows that on average, there are approximately 13 LBWs per 1000 live births among mothers aged 25 to 29, which is the highest while the rates declined rapidly in the older ages. The prevalence rate of LBW obtained for the period is slightly below 8.0% (7.9). The incidence rate increased from 7.0% in 1990 NDHS to 10.2% in 2003 NDHS and declined to 7.3% in 2013 NDHS. The consequences of low-birth-weight among women of childbearing age are increasing neonatal and infant mortality rates, which may hinder the achievement of SDGs in Nigeria. We recommend that the government should encourage mothers to deliver their babies in the approved health care facilities to ensure weight measurement at birth.
Background: The main objective of this study is to assess the prevalence of adverse events (AEs) and its related factors among mother and newborns during labor in Al-Sadaka Teaching Hospital, Aden City.
Methods: A cross-sectional hospital-based study conducted at Al-Sadaka Teaching Hospital, Aden City among 2526 pregnant women who were consented and eligible to be included in the study. Quantitative date were collected over the study time (180 days on 3-time shifts) by interviewer administered questionnaire and a direct observation of the obstetric interventions during childbirth. Descriptive statistics were performed using the SPSS program and a p-value of <0.05 was considered significant at 95% Confidence Interval (CI).
Results: A total of 322 adverse event episodes were identified among both mothers and newborns with a prevalence of 12.7% (322/2526) in the study setting. Almost, the majority of the reported AEs were found among mothers (83.2%). Factors such as prolonged second stage labor was found strongly associated with nulliparous mothers during childbirth (P=001), while asphyxia and meconium aspiration as an AEs among newborns were found associated with the performance of episiotomy intervention during childbirth and fundal pressure (P=0.027, P=0.019, respectively).
Conclusions: Prevalence of AEs among mothers and newborns were high in comparison to the international standard. Further nationwide study was recommended to investigate the different factors associated with AEs in health care services in Yemen and to avoid harmful practices as a key mechanism for improving mother safety.
This study investigated the predictors of nutritional practices among pregnant women attending ante-natal clinic in health centres in Akpor Kingdom of Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State. A descriptive design was used for this study. The target population for this study was seven hundred (700) pregnant women. A simple random sampling technique was used to select a sample size of 422. The instrument for data collection was a self-structured questionnaire with a reliability coefficient of 0.70. Data was collected through face to face administration of the questionnaires to the respondents and analyzed using the Statistical Product for Service Solution (SPSS) version 23.0. Hypotheses were tested with the regression statistics at 0.05 alpha level. The findings of the study showed that nutritional preference significantly predicted the nutritional practices of the pregnant women attending ante-natal clinic in health centres in the study area (r = 0.448, p<0.05). Other factors considered in this study such as knowledge (r = 0.078, p>0.05), age (r = 0.010, p>0.05) and educational status (r = 0.061, p>0.05) did not significantly predict the nutritional practices of the pregnant women. It was concluded that the predictor of nutritional practices among pregnant women attending ante-natal in Akpor Kingdom was their nutritional preference. It was recommended that, midwives should focus on conveying health information in their lessons during antenatal visits of pregnant women in such a way that their nutritional preferences can be influenced positively.
