Abstract
BackgroundMaternal obesity is emerging as a public health problem, recently highlighted together with maternal under-nutrition as a ‘double burden’, especially in African countries undergoing social and economic transition. This systematic review was conducted to investigate the current evidence on maternal obesity in Africa.MethodsMEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus, CINAHL and PsycINFO were searched (up to August 2014) and identified 29 studies. Prevalence, associations with socio-demographic factors, labour, child and maternal consequences of maternal obesity were assessed. Pooled risk ratios comparing obese and non-obese groups were calculated.ResultsPrevalence of maternal obesity across Africa ranged from 6.5 to 50.7%, with older and multiparous mothers more likely to be obese. Obese mothers had increased risks of adverse labour, child and maternal outcomes. However, non-obese mothers were more likely to have low-birthweight babies. The differences in measurement and timing of assessment of maternal obesity were found across studies. No studies were identified either on the knowledge or attitudes of pregnant women towards maternal obesity; or on interventions for obese pregnant women.ConclusionsThese results show that Africa's levels of maternal obesity are already having significant adverse effects. Culturally adaptable/sensitive interventions should be developed while monitoring to avoid undesired side effects.
Highlights
Obesity is a worldwide epidemic.[1]
A comprehensive search of MEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus, CINAHL and PsycINFO was conducted in August 2014 with no restriction on language or publication year (Supplementary data, Table S1)
Consistency established, the remainder were scanned by one reviewer (O.J.O.)
Summary
Obesity is a worldwide epidemic.[1] Prevalence is higher in wealthy countries,[2,3] but increasing in developing countries,[3,4] with severe consequences.[5,6,7,8]. Pregnancy is a recognized obesity trigger.[9] Maternal obesity incidence is increasing worldwide[10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17] and associated with short- and long-term complications for mothers[14,18,19,20,21,22] and children[23,24,25,26] during pregnancy, delivery and post-delivery. Pooled risk ratios comparing obese and non-obese groups were calculated
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