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Abstract; Background: Follow up after hospital discharge is a recommended and common medical practice for high risk infants like those born with low birthweight and at preterm, this however is rare in LIC. Premature babies are at risk of long term disabilities and require continued care both at home and in designated facilities. We sought to determine the attendance of scheduled follow up clinic visits for preterm infants post hospital discharge.; Methods: A review of records for all infants seen in the preterm clinic at Mulago National Referral Hospital between January and December 2015 was done. After discharge from the SCBU, infants are followed up in the Kangaroo Mother Care clinic every fortnight until they weigh 2500 grams. They then transition to the Preterm Care Clinic where they are followed up every two to three months until 18 months of corrected age.; Findings: Between September 2014 and December 2015, 7224 neonates were admitted to the SCU of Mulago Hospital. Of these, 3537 (49 %) weighed less or equal to 2500 grams, thus majority were eligible for follow up in the special clinics after discharge.; Of the 590 babies registered in the PTC during 2016; 423 (71.7%) were included for analysis and 167 (28.3) % were excluded due to missing or incomplete data. Majority of the infants weighed 1501-2000gms (50%), only 3% weighed less than 1000gms, 14% more than 2000gms and 5% record of birth weight was missing. Almost 90% of the visits during KMC clinic were on schedule as compared to 64% during PTC visits. The average number of visits in the KMC clinic were three per baby; 105 babies had between 4-5 visits and 15% of all the participants were still attending the clinic by one year of age. Many babies were not seen in the clinic after the age of 6 months.; Conclusion: Scheduled follow up clinic attendance for low birth weight preterm infants is suboptimal with only one out of four were followed up after one year. There is need to strengthen utilization of available services, community support and devise means to improve the long term follow up. |
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