Johannesburg - We don’t need fancy gadgets - just one simple intervention: antenatal care.
So said neonatologist Dr Ricky Dippenaar, speaking ahead of Pregnancy Week.”In our country, we are still behind in antenatal care. If women would have regular antenatal visits during pregnancy, we would see fewer complications during childbirth, fewer pre-term births, and the mother would be healthy and so would the baby,” he added.
Pregnancy Week is aimed at strengthening awareness on health during pregnancy and a safe transition to motherhood. According to the latest statistics from the Gauteng Department of Health, 182…795 women made antenatal visits at public health facilities from April to November last year.
Of that number, 153 out of 266 women gave birth successfully and four out of 976 babies died at birth. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 15 million babies around the world are born prematurely every year, of whom a million die due to complications.
In South Africa, an estimated one in seven babies are born prematurely.
Antenatal care gives mothers the opportunity to find or exclude medical conditions that can be aggravated by pregnancy, such as hypertension, diabetes, infections and anaemia. It also offers free HIV testing and counselling, and education while tracking the growth of the baby.
“There is an alarming upward trend in the number of pre-term births in South Africa,” Dippenaar stated.
“There may be a number of reasons why women give birth pre-term, including not receiving antenatal care early enough or suffering from pre-eclampsia, or as a result of other complications.”
A healthy pregnancy is, according to Dippenaar, typically around 280 days or 40 weeks, while a pre-term baby is classified as one who is delivered before 37 weeks.
“We are seeing more premature births. This is due to such factors as an increase in the number of older first-time mothers, who tend to have a greater risk of pre-term birth.
“There is also greater use of assisted fertilisation and fertility drugs, which often results in multiple pregnancies. This too carries an increased risk of early birth,” he added.
Provincial health spokesperson Steve Mabona said the reasons for ‘failed pregnancies’ or babies dying during birth at the province’s public facilities were miscarriages, and pre-existing conditions of the mother such as diabetes and hypertension.
“The deaths of babies (in public facilities) are due to prematurity, infections and respiratory distress,” Mabona added.
The department said that to avoid complications during pregnancy and birth, it had implemented a programme which promoted every day as ‘antenatal care day’.
Mabona said: ‘This is done during household visits by ward-based primary health care outreach teams who identify pregnant women who are yet to start antenatal care and refer them to their nearest clinic for early antenatal care booking.”
The Star