During the epidemic in India, 3% more low birth weight babies were born study

A recent study has revealed that during the Covid-19 epidemic, the proportion of low birth weight newborns in India increased significantly by approximately three percent.It was also discovered that babies born during the pandemic had double the chance of being underweight at birth.Since low-weight babies are known to frequently "struggle with school," the rise in low-birth-weight babies may have long-term effects on the development of "human capital," according to corresponding author Santosh Kumar, an associate professor of development and global health economics at the University of Notre Dame in the United States.

"Children who have lower birth weight as infants often go on to struggle with school and this limits their capacity to develop what economists often call 'human capital' -- the key knowledge and skills that will affect their ability to earn a good living and support themselves and their families," Kumar stated.Worldwide, almost one in four newborns (about 3 crore) are underweight, which the World Health Organization (WHO) classifies as weighing less than 2.5 kg.The authors of the study published in the journal Communications Medicine estimate that 95% of these newborns are born in low- and middle-income countries, with about half of them in South Asia.