Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
HomeHealthStudy reveals simple measures can save a million baby deaths per year

Study reveals simple measures can save a million baby deaths per year

New study has revealed that providing affordable healthcare measures to pregnant women in developing countries could prevent over a million babies from dying at birth or shortly after. The international team of researchers has stated that almost no progress has been made in preventing babies from being born either underweight or prematurely.

The researchers are urging governments and organizations to provide better care to women and their babies during pregnancy and birth. The team identified eight low-cost measures that could prevent over 565,000 stillbirths in low- and middle-income countries. These measures include the provision of micronutrient, protein and energy supplements, low-dose aspirin, and education on smoking. Other treatments that could be implemented include hormone progesterone, malaria and syphilis treatments, and bacterial urine treatments.

The research also suggests that if steroids were made available to pregnant women and doctors did not immediately clamp the umbilical cord, the deaths of more than 475,000 newborns could be prevented. The team estimates that implementing these measures would cost $1.1 billion. This is a fraction of what other healthcare programs receive, said Per Ashorn, a lead study author and professor at Tampere University in Finland.

Joy Lawn, a study author from the London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, added that the researchers used a new definition for babies born premature or underweight. She stated that the traditional method of determining low birthweight, if it was born weighing under 2.5 kg, was chosen randomly by a Finnish doctor in 1919. Lawn claimed that this measure is a “very blunt measure” and that these babies are not all the same.

The researchers used a database that included 160 million live births from 2000 to 2020 to work out how often babies are born “too soon and too small”. Lawn stated that the new definition “is much more common once you start to think about it in a more nuanced way.” The researchers estimate that 35.3 million, or one in four, of the babies born worldwide in 2020 were either premature or too small, classified as “small vulnerable newborns.”

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Image source: Google

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While the majority of these babies were born in southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, Lawn emphasized that every country is affected. One of the reasons for the lack of progress is that these problems “happen to families and women with less of a voice,” Lawn said. For example, pregnant African-American women in the United States receive a lower level of care than other groups. The team is urging governments and organisations to provide better care for women and their babies during pregnancy and childbirth. They believe that the eight low-cost measures can have a significant impact in reducing the number of stillbirths and deaths of newborns.

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