PONE-D-21-24852The magnitude of Neonatal Asphyxia and its Associated Factors among newborns; A cross-sectional studyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Dejenie 

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https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0226891

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Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1: I read with great interest the manuscript, which falls within the aim of this Journal. In my honest opinion, the topic is interesting enough to attract the readers’ attention. Nevertheless, authors should clarify some points and improve the discussion, as suggested below.

Authors should consider the following recommendations:

- Manuscript should be further revised in order to correct some typos and improve style.

- I would recommend to highlight clearly other conditions that may cause adverse obstetric outcomes, including neonatal asphyxia, such as advanced maternal age (PMID: 25027820), pre-eclampsia (PMID: 26512423; PMID: 32283429) and obstructed labor (PMID: 31823037; PMID: 32307556 ).

Reviewer #2: This is a cross sectional study analyzing cases of fetal asphyxia in northwest Ethiopia.

The article has some inconsistencies. The most evident are:

- In the abstract you say " The diagnosis of birth

asphyxia was confirmed based on the physician’s diagnosis of an APGAR score < 7 in

the 1 st and 5 th minutes of birth". IN the text you say "The diagnosis of birth asphyxia was made based on the fifth-minute APGAR scores of < 7 ". Please correct

- Regarding the antepartal visits, you reported in the text that 59.1% of patients had 4 or more visits, while in the table they are 54.09%

- Married women are 325 (91.1%) in the text and 32 (8.9%) in the table

I recommend reviewing all correspondences between text and tables.

In table 4 you wrote about "Neonatal medical problem at birth" that 286 babies had no problems, 41 sepsis, 19 birth injury and 11 congenital malformation. It is not clear where the 97 cases of childbirth asphyxia fit in.

In lines 192-193 In lines 192-193 you divide fetal asphyxia into moderate and severe but it is not defined by what criteria this subdivision is carried out.

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The magnitude of neonatal asphyxia and its associated factors among newborns in public hospitals of North Gondar Zone, Northwest Ethiopia: A cross-sectional study

PONE-D-21-24852R1

Dear Dr. Tadesse Asmamaw, 

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