DOHA THE neonatal mortality rate has decreased to 3.26 percent in Qatar in the recent times with pre-term births in the country standing at 10.6 percent, according to a senior official Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) Women’s Hospital.
In his presentation titled ‘The preterm newborn-management and results in Qatar’ at the Sidra Symposium Series on Wednesday, Dr Hilal al Rifai, medical director at the HMC Women’s Hospital said, “Qatar population has increased 10 folds and about 7.2 percent in terms of deliveries. However, the neonatal mortality rate dropped by 87 percent, early neonatal mortality rate dropped by 91 percent, and late neonatal mortality by 58 percent between 1975 and 2011”.
The symposium was held under the theme Preterm Labor: prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
According to Rifai, there were 20, 314 new births in Qatar in 2011, including 16, 792 new births at the Women’s Hospital (5, 951 Qataris and 11, 846 Non- Qataris). Out of the total deliveries at the Women’s Hospital, about 1, 762 were admitted to the HMC Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Fifty percent of the newborn babies admitted to the NICU were pre-term births, seven percent of which were extremely low birth weight.
He said there were 1, 807 low birth weight new born babies and 1, 530 pre-term births at the Women’s Hospital in 2011.
Rifai pointed out that pre-term births account for 8.5 percent of all child births and 72.5 percent of all child deaths at the Women’s Hospital.
“The most common causes of deaths in pre-term births are lethal congenital malformations,” he added.
Speaking about child mortality rates, Rifai said there were 3.3/1,000 births (68) cases of neonatal mortality, 1.3/1000 births (27) cases for early neonatal mortality and 2/1000 cases (41) cases of late neonatal mortality at the Women’s Hospital in 2011.
Dr Michael Katz, senior advisor of Transdisciplinary Research at the US-based March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, who also spoke during the event, said pre-term birth was the number two cause of infant mortality worldwide after respiratory infections.
According to him, every year, an estimated 15 million babies are born prematurely globally with one million of those unlikely to survive.
Dr Joachim Dudenhausen, medical advisor and head of Medical Staff Services at the Sidra Medical and Research Center, said, “Many preterm labours are avoidable through prevention and care. It is important to educate young non-pregnant women that smoking and drinking alcohol is bad for them, their future pregnancy and babies. As a hospital that will specialise in supporting women with high-risk pregnancies, Sidra aims to facilitate the flow of information on this topic with the medical community, as well as the public.”
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