Antenatal care key to reducing negative impacts on pregnant women, newborns – WHO

May 24, 2018 News

---

It is important that pregnant women initiate first antenatal care contact during the first trimester of pregnancy. Such care, according to the World Health Organisation [WHO], enables the early management of conditions which may adversely impact upon pregnancy and potentially reduce the risk of complications for women and newborns during and after delivery.
This is detailed in the recently released World Health Statistics Report of 2018 which states that “reducing maternal mortality crucially depends upon ensuring that women have access to quality care before, during and after pregnancy.
Speaking on the issue of maternal and child health [MCH], MCH Officer, Dr. Ertenisa Hamilton, had made it clear that “We have been working hard to realise the continuity of life.”
“It is everyone’s desire, I’m sure, that every pregnancy ends with a healthy baby and healthy mother. It does not only depend on the medical practitioners. It does not only depend on the staff of the health centres. You must have the necessary equipment in place and all of the other factors that actually contribute to having this become successful.”
Moreover, Dr. Hamilton made it clear that it is the goal of MCH that every mother or every woman or every child, and every adolescent, is among the healthiest within the Caribbean and Latin America.
“We can only have that when we have all of our forces in the right direction, not just health services, but all of the other contributing ministries and sectors,” Dr. Hamilton had shared.
But pregnant women have a crucial role to play in the equation too. This was highlighted as particularly important in the World Health Report, since it was found that “Far too many women still suffer and die from serious health issues during pregnancy and childbirth.”
It revealed that an estimated 303,000 women worldwide died due to maternal causes.
Almost all of these deaths [99 percent] occurred in low and middle-income countries [LMIC].
Globally, it is estimated that more than 40 percent of all pregnant women were not receiving early antenatal care in 2013.
Latest available data suggest that while in most high-income and upper-middle-income countries, more than 90 percent of all births benefitted from the presence of a trained midwife, doctor or nurse, less than half of all births in several low-income and lower-middle-income countries were assisted by such skilled health personnel.
An estimated 77 percent of women of reproductive age who are married or in-union have their family planning needs met with a modern contraceptive method, a situation which leaves nearly 208 million women with unmet needs, according to the Report.
Also recent estimates, according to the Report, indicate that there are 12.8 million births among adolescent girls aged 15-19 years every year, representing 44 births per 1,000 adolescent girls in this age group.
But although early childbearing can increase risks for newborns as well as for the young mothers, the Report reveals that “The world has made remarkable progress in reducing child mortality, with the global under-five mortality rate dropping from 93 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 41 per 1,000 live births in 2016. Nonetheless, every day in 2016, 15,000 children died before reaching their fifth birthday,” the Report added.
According to the Report too, children face the highest risk of dying in their first month of life, with 2.6 million newborns dying in 2016. The majority of these deaths, it was noted, occurred in the first week of life.
“Prematurity, intra-partum-related events such as birth asphyxia and birth trauma, and neonatal sepsis accounted for almost three quarters of all neonatal deaths,” the Report details. It also adds that “Among children aged 1 – 59 months, acute respiratory infections, diarrhoea and malaria were the leading causes of death in 2016, with more young children now surviving, improving the survival of older children [aged 5-14 years]…”
In 2016, about one million such children died, mainly from preventable causes and globally in 2017, 151 million children under the age of five [22 percent] were stunted [too short for their age]. High levels of stunting, the Report states, has been known to negatively impact on the development of countries due to its association with childhood morbidity and mortality risks, learning capacity and non-communicable diseases [NCDs] later in life.
In 2017 too, 51 million children under the age of five [7.5 percent] were wasted [too light for their height], while 38 million [5.6 percent] were overweight [too heavy for their height].

---

---