Prenatal Supplements Related to Less Risk of Low Birth Weight Babies

Prenatal multivitamin supplements are related to significantly reduced risk of babies with a low birth weight in contrast to prenatal iron-folic acid supplementation, so says a new study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ).
The World Health Organization presently recommends iron-folic acid supplements for every pregnant woman . Other research has highlighted the advantage of prenatal multivitamin supplementation over iron-folic acid supplementation.
Low birth weight and related complications are deemed to be the main cause of deaths of infants under the age of 5 years.
It is possible to reduce low birth weight rates by 17% via the intake of multivitamin supplements by pregnant women . This is the synthesised finding of 15 studies published worldwide.
Of the 133m or so births worldwide each year, 15.5% are low birth weight babies. The authors suggest that approximately 1.5 million babies born with a low birth weight could be avoided each year globally, if all mothers took prenatal multivitamins.
Drs Zulfiqar Bhutta and Batool Azra Haider of the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, suggest that multivitamin nutrient supplementation during pregnancy to replace iron and folate supplements in vulnerable populations is fine if proven safe and effective.
In developing countries various interventions may be necessary to improve maternal nutrition and foetal health, like fortified food supplements, which address nutritional deficiencies. In developing countries, measures are needed to lower the burden of HIV, malaria and various other diseases.