Background: Weight measure before and during pregnancy is an indicator of a mother’s health and nutritional status, and the developing fetus.
Objective: The objective of this study was to find the risk factors of underweight at birth.
Methods: Prenatal consultation and delivery registers of health centres were used to fill the questionnaire previously established for this purpose. A Total of 1115 couples’ mothers-newborns were identified. Twins and premature babies were excluded. The main dependent variable was underweight at birth. The WHO growth standards for children born at term were used. The association between two qualitative variables were studied and chi-square test used at 5% significance level. Multinominal logistic regression was used to determine the risk of underweight at birth.
Results: According to the summary statistics, the average weight at the first prenatal consultation, the average height, age and MUAC of the mothers were 56.3 ± 7.7 kg, 162 ± 5.7 cm, 26.2 ± 6.2 years, 253 ± 18.6 mm respectively. With respect to newborns, the average birth weight was 2.9 kg. The average head circumference was 32.6 cm and of these newborns, 20% suffered from microcephaly and 11.1% suffered from underweight at birth. The underweight at birth affected more females (14.2%) than males (8.0%) with a significant difference of P = 0.001. Teenagers’ mothers, whose weight were 40 Kg and were 1.5 metres in height were more at risk to have underweight babies at birth.
Conclusion: The vicious cycle of intergenerational malnutrition still persists and should be addressed seriously.

Underweight at Birth Malnutrition Pregnancy Newborns Burkina Faso