Factors that Affect Child Mortality Rates (Essay Sample)

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A Critical Look into Low Birth Weight and Preterm Births
Low birth weight is weight at birth of less than 2500g or 5.5 pounds. Preterm births are babies born before the 37 weeks of pregnancy. (WHO) These two are the major causes of death in newborns. There are many factors that hike the incidence of both conditions; tobacco and alcohol use, maternal age (if extremely low or high), carrying multiple babies, short time gaps between pregnancies, unhealthy pre-pregnancy weight, late or lack of prenatal care, infection and stress. Prevalence of this condition is higher in the black race. This might be because most black people especially in sub Saharan Africa exhibit most of the mentioned factors. In some cases, they might be underweight before the pregnancy, the nutrition during pregnancy may be poor and they are exposed to little or no family planning education. No family planning results in very small gap between births, which leaves the mother weak, the earlier baby weak due to lack of proper and sufficient breastfeeding and the latter baby’s chances of being born preterm or with low birth weight increase exponentially. Studies have also linked low weight and preterm births to the socioeconomic status and the maternal income.
Extremely low weight births require neonatal intensive care which is expensive. This affects the parents and the community economically. The community also needs to provide moral support for the family. Even when the child is released from hospital, he and the mother should be kept under constant monitoring; the mother to prevent co-morbidities such as depression and anxiety from occurring, the baby to check and reduce occurrence of opportunistic diseases.
In my community, there is a support group for mothers who underwent low weight and/or preterm births. They meet weekly; discuss their babies’ growth and any problems or ail...