Abstract:

Background: Globally approximately fifteen million babies are born too early every year that is one in ten babies. Preterm birth is a common, complex and serious disorder that disproportionately affects African-American families in the United States. In conjunction with low birth weight, prematurity has been the leading cause of neonatal death in African-American newborns for more than a decade and significantly characterizes the continuing racial and ethnic disparities seen in health outcomes today. The likelihood of being born premature was 1 in 6 for African-American infants. Tanzania ranked twenty-fifth in the world for the number of preterm births with 11.4% of babies born in 2010 being preterm.

Objective: To determine acute complications and outcomes of premature infants admitted at Bugando medical centre.

Methodology: This was a retrospective hospital-based study which involved sorting and feeding archived patient’s data on premature infants who were admitted at Bugando medical centre between June 2018 and September 2020. Demographic data like sex, age at admission, GA at birth weight, place of delivery, mode of delivery. And clinical data like paleness, jaundice, fever, low temperature, low blood sugar at admission, difficulty in breathing, vomiting and inability to breast feed, were collected. Data was entered in Microsoft excel a window and analyzed using SPSS version 20

Results: A total of neonates’ data were recorded of the enrolled infants, 229 (97.4%) were admitted at age between 1-10 days, 131 (55.7%) were male, 162 (68.9%) were born at GA of 32-36 weeks, 125 (53.2%) infants weighed 1500-2500 grams. Majority 116 (66.3%) presented with low temperature, 78 (33.2%) presented with difficulty in breathing, 16 (6.8%) presented with jaundice, 15 (6.4%) infants were pale, 11 (4.7%) fever, 14 (6%) had LCWI, 6 (2.6%) infants were unable to breast feed, 4 (1%) were vomiting. Of the enrolled neonates 175 (74.5%) had acute complication, the leading complication was hypothermia 116 (66.3%) followed by respiratory distress syndrome 77 (44%). Among the enrolled neonates 163 (93.1%) infants survived and 12 (6.9%) infants died.

Conclusion: From this study it shows that the prevalence of acute complication is high, hypothermia being the leading complication. Health facilities should put more emphasis on Kangaroo mother care as a cheap and sustainable measure in prevention of hypothermia.