Pregnancy Outcomes in Vaharai, Batticaloa, Sri Lanka

Abstract

. The poor use of prenatal and maternal health services can contribute to this difference. Materials and Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among all the pregnant mothers who attend to routine antenatal clinic for booking visit in medical officer health (MOH) clinics at Vaharai MOH area for a period of one year. This study was aimed to identify the live birth rate and low birth weight incidence in the studied population and compare these figures with national figure. Results: This study included 695 pregnant mothers. 70.4% pregnant mothers attend their first antenatal booking visit before 8 weeks of gestational age. 611 pregnant mothers reached gestational age of more than 28 weeks. 13.7% pregnant mothers had 4 - 6 antenatal visits while 83.6% mothers had more than 7 visits. Among those who had body mass index (BMI) measurement, 39.6% mothers had normal BMI and 43.6% pregnant mothers had low BMI, 16.8% mothers had BMI above the normal range. Among those 611 mothers, 56.8% had adequate weight gain (>7.5 kg) during their antenatal period, 3 of them had weight reduction and 11 mothers had not gain weight during their antenatal period. Majority 85.6% were not anaemic and 14.4% were anaemic. Regarding the current pregnancy outcome, 86.9% had live birth, 12.1% mothers had miscarriage, 0.9% (6) had intra uterine death (IUD) and 0.1% (1) had Hydatidiform mole. This study further showed that 22% of the pregnant mothers had their new-borns birth weight less than 2.5 kg at birth irrespective of their gestational age (low-birth weight babies). Conclusion: The lower live-birth rate, more incidence of low birth weight than the national figure of Sri Lanka is seen in the studied population of Vaharai. More incidence of anaemia, more teen-age pregnancies, failure to achieve recommended gestational weight gain during pregnancies despite frequent antenatal care, could be attributed to this adverse outcome.