Factors Associated With the Diet Quality of Mothers and Infants'Birth Weight at Lodwar Referral Hospital in Turkana County-Kenya

Abstract

Maternal factors, especially dietary aspects before and after pregnancy, have been shown to impact maternal outcomes over the years. Low birth weight, small for gestational age, and preterm babies have been linked to dietary consumption of the mother during gestation. To help lower these rates of early childhood mortality research was paramount in this sector, especially in low-income countries that have recorded high prevalence of adverse birth outcomes. Maternal nutrition has been spearheaded as a public health concern since it determines the outcome of an individual from childhood up to adulthood and above. The prevalence of low birth weight at Lodwar County, Referral Hospital in Turkana County stands at 14%. The research objectives were to assess the socio-demographic characteristics of mothers, to assess the dietary habits of mothers, to determine the prevalence of low-birth-weight infants born to mothers, and to assess maternal nutritional knowledge of the mothers attending Lodwar Referral Hospital. The main goal was to determine the factors associated with the diet quality of the mothers and the infants' birth weight in Turkana County. The study used a longitudinal study design and involved 500 mothers. The overall response rate was 93 per cent of the mothers who attended ANC in the hospital in 2024. The data was collected using pretested and structured questionnaires. SPSS version 29 was used for analysis. A log-binomial model was used to estimate the adjusted risk ratio and its 95%CI of the risk factors for low birth weight. Multi-collinearity was checked using the variance inflation factor (VIF) at a cut-off point of 8 and multi-collinearity found. Result: The overall incidence of low birth weight was 14% (95% CI: 11.1, 17.4%). The incidence of low birth weight was 18.4 and 9.8%among respondents. The difference in low-birth-weight incidence is statistically significant(p-value=0.006). The risk factors of low birth weight were maternal illiteracy (ARR:1.8,95%CI:1.01,3.3), and low monthly family income<5000 Kshs. (ARR:1.6,95%CI:1.07,2.2), food taboos during pregnancy, (ARR:0.47,95%CI:0.28,0.78), and diet meals number<5 (ARR:1.9,95% CI:1.05,2.61). The results showed that the prevalence of low birth weight was 14% which included 245 mothers of the total number of respondents. Conclusion: Low birth weight was significantly higher among the respondents, who had poor diet quality, and low demographic and economic status. The recommendation was to promote better diet quality and exclusive breastfeeding knowledge, government empowering mothers with financial training programmed mothers support group and further research to be conducted in Turkana to reduce high prevalence cases of low birth weight in Turkana.