Births and immigrant births in hospitals in the Maule Region, Chile, years 2020 and 2021

Abstract

Objective: the purpose of this study is to describe the delivery and births of immigrants in the hospitals of Linares, Cauquenes, Constitución and San Javier in the Maule region, in the years 2020 and 2021.

Material and method: a descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out through the analysis of secondary databases of the records of public hospitals in the Maule region in the years 2020 and 2021. The communes corresponded to Linares, Cauquenes, Constitución and San Javier. The sample size corresponded to 4,870 birth records in the region for the years 2020 and 2021. The study variables analyzed were the types of delivery (cesarean section or vaginal delivery) according to nationality and weight in grams.

Results: most foreign births were from Haitian mothers, representing almost 59% of the total. Venezuelan mothers make up the next largest group, with almost 18% of deliveries. When we looked at the type of delivery, we found that Venezuelan mothers had the highest proportion of cesarean deliveries, at about 73%, and 53% of deliveries were vaginal.
Regarding birth weight measured in grams, newborns of Haitian mothers showed a higher proportion in the very low and low weight categories, with 1.37% and 10.27% respectively.

Conclusions: total delivery in the hospitals under study in the years 2020 and 2021, 5% correspond to foreign mothers, of these 52.42% were cesarean sections and 47.58% normal delivery.