Title : Programmatic considerations of maternal overweight and obesity in Sri Lanka
Abstract:
Background and objectives: Overweight and obesity of antenatal women have important implications on women themselves as well as their offspring. The implications to the antenatal woman include higher risk of miscarriage/stillbirth, gestational diabetes mellitus, preeclampsia, and the offspring is also more prone to congenital anomalies, macrosomia, childhood asthma and growth and development issues. In addition to health implications socioeconomic implications too need attention.
There is a national health program in Sri Lanka targeting newly married couples, where nutritional issues including overweight and obesity are addressed. It deals with overweight and obesity before the first conception, but a similar intervention is not available for women prior to subsequent pregnancies.
The objective of the current analysis is to study the trends of maternal overweight and obesity in Sri Lanka which are of programmatic significance.
Methods: Sources of informationsearched included PubMed and google scholar databases, scientific journals, printed reports and review meeting presentations. The keywords used included ‘maternal’, ‘pregnancy’, ‘antenatal’, ‘overweight’ and ‘obesity’.
Results: There has been a rising tendency of maternal overweight and obesity according to studies conducted in numerous settings globally. This tendency is more marked in middle income countries. In Sri Lanka also maternal overweight and obesity has increased by more than one third in the five-yearperiod from 2015 to 2019, according to the Reproductive Health Management Information System of Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka. However, there is lack of scientific investigations carried out in Sri Lanka regarding this issue.
There is a dearth of scientific evidence generated on the association between parity and maternal overweight and obesity in Sri Lanka. However, unpublished data reveal a dramatic rise in maternal overweight and obesity with increasing parity. Thisneeds to be reviewed in the backdrop of absence of pre-pregnancycare for multiparous women in Sri Lanka.
Conclusions: Maternal overweight and obesity in Sri Lanka is an important issue that requires better focus by policy makers, service providers and researchers.
Audience Take Away Notes:
- Overweight and obesity is an important health implication during pregnancy. Currently, the focus in low and middle income countries is on underweight across the whole life cycle, including in pregnancy. The participants, especially from low and middle income countries, will start focusing more on overweight and obesity during pregnancy.
- Health and nutrition service providers will pay more emphasis on prevention of overweight and obesity in reproductive age women.
- Currently there is global emphasis on providing healthcare to newly married couples that include addressing their nutritional issues prior to first pregnancy. However, a similarstrategy is lacking in many settings for addressing nutritional issues prior to subsequent pregnancies. The participants will be motivated to address this important gap in service provision.
- Participants from health and nutrition education sectors will be motivated to focus more on maternal overweight and obesity, as well as on inter-pregnancy care.
- Participants will be motivated to generate evidence related to maternal overweight and obesity.
