Birthweight of the babies delivered by chronic energy deficient mothers in National Nutrition Program (NNP) intervention area.

An operational research was done to explore the effect of targeted food supplementation by comparing the birthweight of the babies of two areas (intervention & nonintervention). This record-based study was carried out in Kapasia and Savar upazila of Dhaka division, relying on the primary organizational data of 565 mothers. In the National Nutrition Program (NNP) area only fifty percent moderate to severe malnourished [Chronic Energy Deficiency (CED) II & III] mothers were preferably targeted for onsite food support while 34 of them managed to complete the full course. The mean (+/- SD) BMI of the supplemented mothers were lower (16.21 +/- 0.77) kg/m2, than non-supplemented mothers in Kapasia (17.14 +/- .82) kg/m2 and Savar 17.03 +/- 1.19) kg/m2 area. The mean (+/- SD) birth-weight for non NNP (Savar) category Mean (+/- SD) 2470+/- 366.03 grams, for NNP (Kapasia) non-supplemented group 2720.18 (+/- 368.63) grams and in Kapasia good supplemented group it was 2752.94 (+/- 344.86) grams. Supplemented and non-supplemented mothers of NNP mothers were four times more likely to deliver normal birthweight babies [odds ratio with 95%CI 3.84 (2.01, 7.34)] and [odds ratio with 95%CI 3.90 (2.17, 7.01)] than mothers of control area when adjusted for sociodemographic variables. Birth weight status improved with better CED levels. Birth weight adjusted for CED status, had no significant association with food supplementation. In this study, the basic findings were food supplementation could not increase birth-weight significantly as other effects contributed to improve birthweight were removed. As fully supplemented CED III mothers gave birth almost same weighted babies in comparison to the babies of CED I mothers; the recovery from the probability of being less weighted than the current status might be considered as a potential effect of food supplementation.