Half the child deaths in India due to premature birth

Nearly half of all child deaths in India are caused due to premature births, making it the second leading cause in the country, said a report by international NGO Save the Children. The number one cause is pneumonia.

The report added that India has the highest number of children dying of preterm births.“All newborns are vulnerable but preterm babies are acutely so,” says UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who wrote the foreword to the report.

Preterm birth is defined as birth after less than 37 weeks of pregnancy. In India, 27.2 million preterm babies are born in a year. According to report ‘Born Too Soon: The Global Action Report on Preterm Birth’, India is among the top 10 countries that account for 60 per cent of the world’s preterm births.

Even in terms of preterm birth rates - the number of children born prematurely per 1,000 live births - India ranks 36.

Save the Children India CEO Thomas Chandy said many factors such as early marriage, inadequate nutritional intake by pregnant women and lack of adequate health interventions are the reasons that contributed to such a high rate of preterm births.

The report suggested India could reduce deaths by 50 per cent through better management of neonatal infections, improved thermal care, feeding support, and scaling up Kangaroo Mother Care. In KMC, the premature baby is put in early, prolonged and continuous direct skin-to-skin contact with the mother or a family member to provide stable warmth and encourage frequent breastfeeding.

Each year, around 15 million babies in the world, more than one in 10 births, are born early, the report said. Around one million of those babies die shortly after birth. Others suffer some type of lifelong physical or neurological disability. 

Preterm risk factors include a prior history of pre-term birth, underweight, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, smoking, infection, maternal age (either under 17 or over 40), genetics, multi-foetal pregnancy (twins, triplets, and higher), and pregnancies spaced too closely.