To evaluate the prevalence of the low back pain among midwives and nurses.

This is a cross-sectional descriptive and analytical study of 170 health professional (28 midwives and 142 nurses) of medicines and surgical specialties of the CNHU-Cotonou that occurred from March to May 2015.

The mean age were 40.89±7.45 and 40.31±7.43 and BMI were 29.35±4.03 and 26.92±4.74 respectively for midwives and nurses. Every other participant practices sport (54.12%), particularly nurses (80.43%) but the difference is not significant (χ²=1.396; P=0.23). The overall prevalence of low back pain is 67.64%, including 54.70% with a moderate functional impact at EIFEL and 3.52% with severe repercussions. Nurses are slightly most affected (69.01%) but the difference was not statistically significant (χ²=0.28; P=0.89); 21% of the subject with low back pain have been off work for an average of 23 days. This health rest is influenced by the importance of the functional impact at EIFEL (χ²=21.78; P<0.001) and the gender (female) (χ²=5.22; P=0.022). The occurrence of low back pain is delayed by the use of materials with adjustable height (χ²=10.54; P=0.014) and the observation of a break of 15 to 60minutes at work (χ²=6.33; P=0.042).

The prevalence of low back pain among midwives and nurses of CNHU is in line with Alcouffe et al. (2002) and Bejia (2007), but greater than those found by Debbabi et al. (2006) and Ando et al. (2000). The factors involved are consistent with other authors. The detrimental effect observed by EIFEL scale, causes job performance decline and can lead to physical deconditioning (Zerkaka et al., 2006). The use of materials with adjustable height can slightly reduce this prevalence (Verbeek et al., 2011).