Birth Weight Essay

Birth weight of a child is the first and most important indicator of his/her health condition. Birth weight is the first weight of fetus obtained after birth. But this is a final result of long process which is accomplished by maternal nutrition. Unless child is a preterm baby (born before the end of 3rd trimester) he/she should be averagely more than 2,500g of weight to consider as normal (WHO, 2000).This is not only a risk for under developed or developing countries but affecting to developed countries as well. There are numerous factors affecting this adverse situation. In this document it is going to be discussed thoroughly and widely with some logical solutions which should be ideal to introduce immediately. As concerned above this low birth weight (LBW) issue has caused to many health impairments in latter part of the life. This impaired fetal feeding and the resulting intrauterine growth restriction has being caused for infant mortality by 8-17 % of pregnancies in the developed and developing countries (UNICEF, 2003). Though the child was low in weight he/she may bear many health problems inside the body which are shown at the elderly period. To describe the prevalence of this low birth weight all over the world, the table 01 is given below.
According to this table south Asian countries have bulk numbers of low birth weights. In Sri Lankan situation it has retained at tolerable level at 18% but should be reduced. Further with compared to universal average it is bit upper value, so as a conclusion there is a significant difference in low birth weight percentage in both more developed and less developed countries.
According to the surveys carried out by many organizations, the maternal malnutrition predominate this low birt...

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...ritious diet with low fibers and should not stop the breast feeding.
Frequent analysis of child’s growth is very important to see whether child is growing properly unless we should give the supplements. This screening is effective for LBW babies.
Prior strategies can be concerned to optimize the growth of fetus. Campaigns for pregnant mothers and giving necessary supplements like folate, vitamin C, Iron and Calcium. This has been significantly encouraged mostly in Sri Lanka since 2009 through assay done by Kandy hospital (Wickramasinghe SC et al, 2010).
Unlike developed countries, developing or under developed countries have bit lower concern on nutritional improvement and follow loose mandatory criteria. For instance there is a rule for food manufacturers in US to indicate Trans-fat content in product. But most of other countries don’t follow such processes.