Approximately 3-5% of all live newborns have a medically significant birth defect. The recent report by March of Dimes estimated birth defects to be >69.9/1000 live births in most Arab countries, as opposed to <52.1/1000 live births in Europe, North America and Australia [27]. Lower observed rates of 7.92/1000 births and 12.5/1000 births were registered in the UAE and Kuwait, respectively [28, 29]. In Oman, among 21,988 births, 24.6 per 1000 births had major malformations [30].
