Maternal and Child Health: The Perinatal Paradox in a Developing Country

Several recent studies have demonstrated the exposure of social groups to bad health conditions. That puts individuals at the risk of experiencing adverse outcomes, which includes mostly transgenerational effects.Concerning the mother’s and the newborn’s health, their socioeconomic conditions contribute to the occurrence Low Birth Weight (LBW) and preterm cases.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), among all the births in the world, around 20.6 million (15.5%) of babies are born with LBW.Most of these cases are in developing countries (e.g. 27% in Asia against 6.4% in Europe), in which the rate of child mortality is similar to the maternal mortality, with a great incidence particularly in Africa and Asia.Although the mothers' and newborns' access to health has improved in many countries, there are still huge inequalities between developing and developed countries and also regional differences inside them, evidencing the uneven health conditions of the population.

LBW rates in developing countries have been associated with adverse socioeconomic conditions, in which there are a great number of newborns with Intrauterine Growth Restriction (IGR), while in developed countries LBW is primarily related to preterm delivery.This situation can be verified in Brazil, a medium-income developing country administratively organized in five regions with distinctive environmental, cultural and socio-economic circumstances.

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