BIRTH WEIGHT OF NEW BORN IN RELATION TO NUTRITIONAL STATUS OF PREGNANT WOMEN IN GUSAU LGA OF ZAMFARA STATE.

Abstract

Impartial of this study is to describe an empirical evidence to support previous research on how anemia and poor nutritional status can affect pregnant women   weight gain   and that of child at birth, it also offer some insight and suggestion for more opportunity and interventions by various stakeholders who are concerned about maternal and child health interventions in Zamfara state and beyond. Retrospective research design was adopted. The population of the study consisted of simple randomly selected 247 pregnant women between the ages of 15 and 49 with singleton pregnancy that had no pregnancy complication and delivered in Federal medical Centre and Yerima Bakura Specialist Hospital between January 2023 to June, 2023, data was gotten from facility medical record. Data were inputted into SPSS and analyzed with STATA statistical software, some of the statistical analysis was done by the Chi-square test, Fisher exact test, and t-test. A  P value of <0.05 was considered significant.  Planned sampling Techniques was employed to choose the hospitals. Findings revealed that the rate of maternal weight gain in FMC and YBSH was reduced, but there is increased total weight gain in pregnant women attending ANC in FMC facilities compare to YBSH. Anemia prevalence was found in 92% of pregnant women in both facilities but the anemia prevalence was more in pregnant women between the ages of 19-25, with YBSH having the highest percentage. Birth weight was associated with gestational weight gain and baby weight, and anemia prevalence was associated with gestational weight gain and baby weight. This study recommended   high prevalence of anemia in both facilities ranging from mild to moderate, with no severe anemia, it was also noted that there is no relationship between gestational weight gain and age group, a reduced mean maternal weight gain with reduced baby birth weight of pregnant women in YBSH and FMC was noted. Despite this, about 7% of baby born had low birth weight which is lower than the rate of 12% of Sub-Sahara Africa, indicating that some infant’s birth weight was affected by the mother nutritional status.