Malaria during pregnancy reduces birth weight, and low birth weight is a major determinant of infant mortality. The authors estimated the impact of malaria during pregnancy on infant mortality in a Karen population living in Thailand. Between 1993 and 1996, a cohort of 1,495 mothers and their infants was followed weekly from admission of the mother to antenatal clinics until the first birthday ...

Birth is a spiritual experience for mother and baby. Women need information and psychological preparation before birth, and a knowledgeable companion during birth. Unless medical intervention is needed, medical personnel should step back and stay out of the way.

violence and the threat of violence against pregnant women are main barriers to women’s empowerment and equal participation in society. when stress and violence increase in developing societies, women’s safety in the home, workplace and community is often seriously affected. to determine the prevalence of physical abuse in pregnant women and to assess association between physical violence durin...

BACKGROUND Early parental separation may be a stress factor causing a long-term alteration in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis activity possibly impacting on the susceptibility to develop overweight and obesity in offspring. We aimed to examine the body mass index (BMI) and the risk of overweight and obesity in children whose parents lived separately before the child was born. METHODS ...

Bhatt et al’s paper provides a good argument for ensuring that ventilation is established before clamping the umbilical cord (1). The possibility that very early clamping could explain the increased occurrence of intraventricular hemorrhage was proposed in 1988 by Hofmeyr (2) who showed that in human babies there was a marked rise in arterial pressure when the cord was clamped as late as 35 s a...