Prevalence of Birth Defects and Assessment of Possible Risk Factors Among Infants Born in Selected Hospitals and Health Center in Addis Ababa
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Date
2021-09-03
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
A birth defect (BD) can be defined as any structural or functional abnormality determined by factors
operating largely before conception or during gestation. It may be recognized prenatally, during
delivery or in postnatal developments. The main objective of this study was to document and analyze data
on the prevalence of birth defects and assess possible risk factors in selected Hospitals and Health
centers in Addis Ababa. These selected hospitals and health centers were Menelike II General
Specialized Hospital, Kotebe Health center,Jalmeda Health center, Kebena health center, Kotebe
Millennium Health center and Denbrua Hospital . Data were collected from Hospitals and Health
centers by questionnaire and medical records between September 2019 and August 2020.during the study
period the total birth of 52321were recorded in the selected hospitals and health centers out of this about
107infants was born with birth defects. This is about 0.2% or2 per1000 birth. from those mothers only 25
could participates in questionnaire. In this research five types of birth defects have been identified. The
most frequent type of birth defect was Down syndrome 32.7%, while the least frequent was or facial cleft
7.47%. This difference was statistically significant (p=0.00). The infant mother age showed a direct
relationship with defective birth where older mothers had higher probability for births with BDs. This
was also supported by the presence of a statistically significant difference between younger and older
mothers with BDs (p=0.001). In addition, about 80% of defective children mothers follow parental care
but only 32% do so from the beginning of their pregnancy while 48% started follow-up at a later stage.
Even though 60% of mothers take folic acid, only 16% take folic acid from the beginning of their
pregnancy while 44% had started taking folic acid at later stage of their pregnancy. Moreover, about
60% of mothers that consume alcohol also had defective births, while smoking had a slight significance
for birth defects the percentage of female infants with birth defects compared to males was higher 57% vs
43% . But this difference was not statistically significant (0.147) therefore the finding of this research
indicated the disuse and inappropriate use of folic acid, alcohol consumption, smoking, maternal age,
and lack of prenatal care follow up properly are possible risk factors with the occurrence of birth
defects.
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Keywords
Birth Defect, Prevalence, Folic Acid, Health Center, Addis Ababa