NEAR EAST AND NORTH AFRICA Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2023: Statistics and trends

3.3. Prevalence of Low Birthweight

Low birth weight is defined by the World Health Organization as weight at birth less than 2500g, which can include preterm and full-term births. In 2020, the prevalence of low birthweight in the Arab States was 13.3 percent, slightly lower than the global prevalence of 14.7 percent. Nevertheless, with only 0.2 percentage point decrease between 2012 and 2020, the region has made little progress toward the World Health Assembly target to decrease low birthweight by 30 percent between 2012 and 2025.

Between 2012 and 2020 (Figure 22 and Table 13), the prevalence of low birthweight decreased in lower-middle-income countries by 0.1 percent. In all other subregions, the prevalence has increased, with the largest increase in upper-middle-income countries by 0.6 percent.

The prevalence of low birthweight in all subregions was below the global estimate, with the highest prevalence in lower-middle-income countries (13.8 percent), followed by low-income countries (13.7 percent), Arab States LDCs (13.7 percent), upper-middle income countries (12.2 percent), and high-income countries (10.7 percent) (Table 13).

Among countries (Figure 23), the highest prevalence of low birthweight was in Comoros (23 percent) and the lowest in Algeria (7.2 percent). Most countries made marginal progress in reducing the prevalence of low birthweight between 2012 and 2020, with decreases over 1 percentage point in Comoros (1.1 percentage points) and Morocco (1.3 percentage points). In contrast, the highest increase in prevalence of low birthweight was in Jordan (1.9 percentage points).