PREDICTORS OF LOW-BIRTH-WEIGHT AT THE COMMUNITY-LEVEL

The outcome of pregnancy was studied in 148 women over a two year peri od in a rural area of Kenya as part of a prospective longitudinal stud y whose main objective was to study the functional effects of mild to moderate malnutrition. Data were collected on maternal anthropometric variables monthly, haemoglobin levels were determined by blood samples taken every six months, food intake was based on two days each month of actual weight and recall. Each woman's past reproductive history wa s established at the beginning of the study. Birth weight was taken an d recorded within seventy two hours of delivery, Discriminant analysis was used to identify predictors of low birthweight, The analysis was based on 123 eases who had complete data on all the variables used in the equation, Of those included in the analysis, 14 women (11%) delive red low birthweight babies and 109 had normal birthweight babies. Resu lts of the discriminant analysis showed that mid upper arm circumferen ce (MUAC), body mass index (BMI), Blood haemoglobin levels (HB) and so cioeconomic status (SES), are the best predictors of low birthweight, Ranked in order of relative contribution to birthweight they are BMI, HE, MUAC and SES, Low birthweight prevalence was determined as being 1 1.2 per cent, Eighty per cent of all known cases were correctly classi fied using the four variables, As a screening tool for low birthweight this model with four variables has 93% sensitivity, 78.4% specificity , 35.13% positive predictive value and 98.98% negative predictive valu e. The results suggest that it is possible to identify women at high r isk for delivering low birthweight babies at the community level.