Targeted food supplementation through National Nutrition Program and pregnancy weight gain status in selected upazilas

A record based operational research was conducted to explore the effect of targeted food supplementation of National Nutritional Program on pregnancy weight-gain. Records of chronic energy deficient mothers who delivered their baby between 1st January and 31st December, 2008 in the study areas were reviewed. The study included 439 samples from Kapasia sub-district, a National Nutritional Program intervention area and 126 samples from Savar subdistrict, as control area. In the National Nutritional Program area 211 (48%) of the chronic energy deficient mothers were enrolled for supplementation and only 34 (8%) of them completed the full course. Samples of Kapasia and Savar were significantly different in their socio-demographic status. The early–pregnancy average body mass index of supplemented mothers (16.21±0.77) was significantly different from non supplemented mothers of Kapasia (17.14±.82) and Savar areas (17.03±1.19). Average pregnancy weight gain in mothers of control area (6.50±1.53 kg) were significantly lower than supplemented (7.94±1.99 kg) and non-supplemented mothers (7.82±2.28 kg) in National Nutrition Program intervention area (p 0.001).Multivariate analysis showed supplemented mothers were six times [OR with 95% CI; 6.34 (2.43,16.52) and non-supplemented mothers from same area were eleven times more likely to gain targeted weight than the mothers of control area after adjusting for other variables. Duration of supplementation did not show any influence on pregnancy weight gain. The current study showed significant difference in weight gain between National Nutrition Program area and control area, but no significant difference was noticed between non-supplemented and supplemented mothers within National Nutrition Program area. A large-scale well-designed trial is recommended to explore this effect