Abstract
Objective
To examine the association between various types of domestic violence (DV) during pregnancy (emotional violence, physical violence, and sexual violence) and pre-term or low birthweight delivery in women living in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam.
Methods
A cross-sectional study was conducted in ten districts of Ho Chi Minh city during the period of January 1, 2015–July 4, 2016, with 1,099 women aged 18–49 years old who had delivered at least one child within the past 2years and were living in Ho Chi Minh city.
Results
DV prevalence during pregnancy among women aged 18–49 years in Ho Chi Minh city was 23.4%. Emotional violence accounted for 16.8%; physical violence 7.3%, and sexual violence 12.4%. Results of multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that DV during pregnancy was associated with a 1.44-times increased risk of pre-term or/and low birthweight delivery (POR=1.44, 95% CI=1.04–1.99).
Conclusion
Domestic violence during pregnancy was associated with increased risk of pre-term/low birthweight delivery in Vietnamese women. These findings suggest the need for DV screening during antenatal care. Once DV is detected, the victims should be provided with counseling services and referred to available local support services so that they are provided with timely intervention.
Supplementary material
Demographic variables were defined and collected, including:
(1) Study subject’s and husband’s age was calculated as year of study minus year of birth.
(2) Marital status was a binary variable with two values of single or cohabiting. Single was women who had ever been married and diagnosed as having infertility, but then divorced and lived alone. They visited the hospital with the desire for infertility treatment.
(3) Economic status was a nominal variable, with ordinal values of just enough for living or relatively wealthy that were defined on subjective assessment.
(4) Alcohol abuse was based on the International Classification of Diseases ICD-10, alcohol abuse was diagnosed when three of the following criteria existed within at least one recent year:
– Vigorous desire that was unable to stop and forced to go on.
– Alcohol intake decrease or termination was very difficult.
– Evidence of increased alcohol tolerance, like increased volume consumption.
– Gradually ignoring hobbies which had been preferred before.
– Continuation of alcohol intake, despite harm being known.
Disclosure
The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.