A cross sectional study to identify factors determining low birth weight babies observed in a tribal district of Odisha, India

Birth weight is one of the important determinants of the chance of new born babies to survive and experience healthy growth and development. So present study was done to find some risk factors associated with delivering low birth weight (LBW) babies by the tribal womens in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, India. A cross sectional, institution-community based study was undertaken over a period of 3 months on mothers at various hospitals and community in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha. The study group consisted of 100 mothers who had LBW babies and compared with 100 mothers who had normal birth weight babies, as control group. Factors like age at marriage, education of mother, family income, weight before pregnancy, weight gain during pregnancy, number of parity, completed months of pregnancy, hemoglobin level, blood pressure, infection, chronic disease, physical work, intake of iron and folic acid, alcohol consumption, use of tobacco etc. were compared between the two groups. Among the mothers of LBW babies, 70 (86.41%) had married between 15-19 years of age, 36 (94.73%) attained education up to primary level, 21 (91.30%) had family income< Rs. 1000 per months, 25 (80.64%) had achieved last conception at the age of 19 years, 14 (66.66%) had birth spacing <19 months, 42 (73.68%) had height<150cm, 70 (75.26%) had hemoglobin level<11gm/dl, 64 (78.04%) had malaria during pregnancy, 30 (85.71%) had done hard physical work during pregnancy, 42 (73.68%) had inadequate ANC visits, 91(73.98%) had no additional diet during pregnancy, 59 (83.09%) had consumed alcohol and 56 (77.77%) were addicted with tobacco during and before pregnancy. In addition to these factors, various epidemiological factors, the maternal factors like antenatal care, parity, inter pregnancy interval and bad obstetric history are also found to influence birth weight. Hence, it is the need of the hour to strengthen the existing maternal services at the basic level of community.