Babies born during the epidemic were also shown to be at twice the risk of having a low birth weight. Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of babies in India born with a low birth weight rose sharply — by about three per cent, a new study has found.
Babies born during the pandemic were also found to be at double the risk of having a low weight at birth.The increase in babies born with a low weight could impact the development of “human capital” in the long term, as these infants are known to often “struggle with school”, corresponding author Santosh Kumar, an associate professor of development and global health economics at the University of Notre Dame, US, said. “Children who have lower birth weight as infants often go on to struggle with school and this limits their capacity to develop what economists often call ‘human capital’ — the key knowledge and skills that will affect their ability to earn a good living and support themselves and their families,” Kumar said.
Roughly one in every four babies (3 crore) around the world are born with a low weight, which the World Health Organization (WHO) defines as being less than 2.5 kilograms.
About 95 per cent of these babies are born in low- and middle-income countries, with around half being born in South Asia, according to the authors of the study published in the journal Communications Medicine.In this study, the researchers found that babies born between April 2020 and April 2021 weighed less than the WHO-defined limit, compared to those born before the pandemic.Over two lakh infants were analysed, of which 12,000 were born during the pandemic and about 1,92,000 born pre-pandemic. Data was taken from the fifth round of the Indian National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), conducted during 2019-2021.
“The low birth weight prevalence rate (among babies) is 20 per cent in the pandemic cohort and 17 per cent in the pre-pandemic cohort,” the authors wrote in the study, which they claimed is the first one to look at how the pandemic affected birth outcomes in India using a nationally representative sample.
Over two lakh newborns were analyzed, including 12,000 born during the pandemic and around 1,92,000 born prior to the outbreak. Data were obtained from the fifth round of the Indian National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), which was conducted between 2019 and 2021.
“The low birth weight prevalence rate (among babies) is 20 percent in the pandemic cohort and 17 percent in the pre-pandemic cohort,” the authors wrote in the study, which they claimed is the first to look at how the pandemic affected birth outcomes in India using a nationally representative sample.
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Source: BS
