Birth Cohort Study

Maternal socio- cultural, health factors that determine the immediate complications of pregnancy, and neonatal population in Jaffna, Sri Lanka

A cross sectional analytical retrospective study is carried out using the data of the mothers who registered in any of the 14 Medical Officers of Health area of Jaffna Regional Directorate of Health services throughout 2020, and delivered the babies in 2020 in Jaffna district. The aim of this study is to assess the association of pre-pregnancy and pregnancy related medical conditions, socio- cultural characteristics, pre conceptional and antenatal risk factors, on maternal and foetal outcomes of mothers registered for the pregnancy with the public health midwifes in Jaffna district in 2020. The data is collected from existing secondary data of “B” portion of pregnancy record, and Child Health Development Record using an electronic based survey, i.e. KoBoCollect using an android device. The number of births recorded in 2020 was 8053. We have collected 1000 data.

Ethical clearance was obtained from Ethics Review Committee, Faculty of Medicine (J/ERC/21/125/NDR/0248), and permission from Education, Training & Research Unit of ministry of Health permission has been obtained.

In future, the findings will be used to establish a birth cohort study to find out the influence of pre-conceptional and antenatal risk factors on birth immediate birth outcome, as well as to determine the causal relationship between potential risk factors during the prenatal or postnatal period and the health status of the newborn up to childhood and potentially adulthood.