Abstract
Objectives: Current study sought to determine an association between Low Birth Weight (LBW) and early neonatal mortality at a resource limited country’s referral hospital and to determine relationship between maternal age and birth outcomes. Method: A retrospective study analyzing data on births in the Volta Regional Hospital, Ghana from the period of November 2011 to June 2016. A total of 8279 births were analyzed. Results: Results suggest that teenage mothers (8.60%) are more likely to give birth to pre-term babies than the elderly (6.60%) and the adult mothers (4.61%). LBW is highest among the teenage mothers (12.69%) followed by the elderly mothers (7.87%) and then the least among the adult mothers (6.48%). Extremely Low Birth Weight (ELBW) and Macrosomia births were more observed among the elderly mothers (0.90%; 2.17%) than the teenage (0.28%; 0.14%) and adult mothers (0.34%; 1.61%) respectively. Data suggest that 100% of the ELBW were pre-term birth, 88.28% Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW), 34.56% LBW and only 1.06% of the pre-term birth were with Normal Birth Weight (NBW). Death rate ranges from 50% for ELBW, 33.59% for VLBW, 8.22% for LBW, 5.43% for Macrosomia and 1.5% for NBW. However, death rate distribution among the various age groups was statistically not significant (P 0.106). Conclusions: Our study suggests that early neonatal death, especially deaths among ELBW and VLBW is still high at the VRH of Ghana and therefore there is the need for further studies into interventions to reduce death among neonates born with VLBW and ELBW.
Highlights
Neonatal Death (END) is a major public health problem facing both developed and developing countries worldwide
Data suggest that 100% of the Extremely Low Birth Weight (ELBW) were pre-term birth, 88.28% Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW), 34.56% LBW and only 1.06% of the pre-term birth were with Normal Birth Weight (NBW)
Our study suggests that early neonatal death, especially deaths among ELBW and VLBW is still high at the VRH of Ghana and there is the need for further studies into interventions to reduce death among neonates born with VLBW and ELBW
Summary
Neonatal Death (END) is a major public health problem facing both developed and developing countries worldwide. One of the major attributed causes of END is Low Birth Weight (LBW) which has been defined by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2004) as weight at birth of less than 2500 grams (5.5 pounds) [1]. More than 20 million infants worldwide, representing 15.5% of all births, are born with LBW, 95.6% of them in developing countries. It was reported that level of LBW in developing countries was 16.5%, which was more than double the 7% level in developed regions [1]. For Africa, percentage of LBW infants was estimated to be 13.9% while that for Ghana was 11.0% as obtained from the Demographic and Health Survey reanalyzed in June 2003 [1]
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