Objective: The aim of this work was to gain knowledge on the health status of pregnant women in Switzerland, especially their attitude to and decisions about diet, use of medication and consumption of drugs, including alcohol and tobacco.
Methods: Data collected by the consecutive Swiss Health Surveys of 2007 and 2012 on sociodemographic and lifestyle characteristics (including nutrition), type and intake of medication, use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs of the female population were analysed. To compare pregnant with non-pregnant women, a group of 10 times as many non-pregnant women (reference group, n = 3090) was matched with all the participating women who said they were pregnant at the time of the survey (pregnant group, n = 309). The two groups were then compared.
Results: The pregnant and non-pregnant participant groups were comparable with respect to most sociodemographic characteristics and both showed a high awareness of health-related issues. Significantly more pregnant than non-pregnant women revealed a high nutritional awareness, claiming to pay attention to what they ate (78.3 vs 73.0%). Frequent consumption of milk products and fish, and moderate consumption of meat were found more often in the pregnant group. Use of medication was comparable between the two groups, except that pregnant women took pain killers less frequently than did non-pregnant women (30.0 vs 61.5%) and relied more often on prescribed medication. Pregnant women were more restrictive in their alcohol consumption than non-pregnant women. Nevertheless, 10.0 and 1.9% of the pregnant women declared consumption of wine and beer, respectively, in the previous 7 days. Regular smoking was less frequent in the pregnant group than in the reference group (11.7 vs 30.3%) and less intensive (pregnant smokers smoked 3.6 cigarettes fewer per day). A few pregnant women (1.9%) said they consumed marijuana; no other illicit drugs were mentioned.
Conclusions: In Switzerland, women of child-bearing age revealed high general health-awareness. During pregnancy, a considerable proportion of the women adapted their diet and seemed to refrain from using pain killers and from consuming alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs. However, since a fairly large minority of the pregnant women mentioned drinking alcohol and/or smoking tobacco, further preventive work is needed.