Investigation of sociodemographic and health characteristics of mothers in low birth weight newborns in Malatya city center

Abstract

The prerequisite for a healthy life is to be born healty. Low birth weight (LBW) is an important risk factor for morbidity and mortality in early or late period of life. So reducing the incidence of low birth weight not only lowers infant mortality rates but also has multiple benefits over the life cycle.The purpose of this study is to find out whether the differences in terms of socio-demographic and health characteristics of newborns’ mothers with LBW than normal weight ones. This study covers to the mothers who gave birth in obstetrics and gynecology clinics of two hospitals during March and June 2010 in Malatya city center. It is a case-control study according to the time scheduled beeing a cross-sectional. The 45-item questionnaire surveyed to 350 mothers of newbors selected by random procedure was performed by the method of face-to-face interview. 123 newborns under 2500 grams as case group, 227 infants 2500 grams and over were taken as control. For evaluation of the data used by SPSS program, chi-square test for independent samples was performed in analysis. 95% confidence interval, and error level of p = 0.05 was chosen. 58.3% of the mothers\' ages ranged from 20 to 30 in the study included. 28.0% of the mothers\' education level was primary school or less, 28.9% had seen in the higher-level education. 57,4% of mothers were housewives and 26.9% of those had a monthly income 550 $ below. 85.1% of mothers have lived in urban area and 14.9% in the villages. At the end of this study; 5.4 times (95% CI = 2.2 [Med-Science 2013; 2(3.000): 665-78]

Keywords

• Newborn
• low birth weight
• risk factors