| dc.description.abstract |
Annually, maternal undernutrition and low birth weight contributes to 800, 000 neonatal deaths and 1.1 million neonatal mortality worldwide,respectively. Iron deficiency is one of the leading risk factors for disability and death worldwide, affecting an estimated 2 billion people, of whom 42% were pregnant women. Evidence is scarce on the underlying causes and insufficient to uncover the burden of the problem. This mainly due to the majority of the existing studies are facility based, a proxy measures like hemoglobin is used to assess iron deficiency as part of routine care, as many deliveries occur in homes data on LBW remain limited and research that assess nutritional status using biochemical tests has been generally given less emphasis. Therefore, this thesis carried out to fill the existing gap in Ethiopia, particularly in study setup. |
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