• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Nigeria’s loses preterm babies to extreme low birth weight, respiratory support challenges

Preterm babies

The survival rate of preterm babies in Africa, Nigeria inclusive is unlikely to improve within the last decade of the Sustainable Development Goals’ target of 2030.

Some experts say African countries may require as much as 110 years attaining same survival chances for preterm newborns as obtains in high-income countries.

Chinyere Ezeaka, professor of paediatrics, College of Medicine, University of Lagos made this known while speaking on this year’s World Prematurity Day themes “Together for babies born too soon – Caring for the future.”

According to her, worried about newborns in Nigeria, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) had passed, and now we are looking at the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“Newborn deaths contribute 32 percent to under-five mortality and prematurity takes a toll in the number of babies that die in Nigeria which is about 31 percent of newborn deaths are directly due to complications of preterm birth.

“We should know the deaths within the newborn period. These are the neonatal period and these are the babies in the first one month, the first 28 days of life. Take a big toll in under -five deaths, and unless we sort out these problems, we may not be able to achieve the SDGs and projections have shown less Nigeria expedites and the whole of sub Saharan Africa will lead to nearly three times longer than this changes despite new intervention,” said Ezeaka.

World Prematurity Day is marked on the 17th of November every year and is one of the most important days in the year to raise awareness of the challenges and burden of preterm birth globally.

The day is centered to point out the huge weight of death, incapacity, pain, and suffering that preterm birth causes, and also, this day brings these issues to light and helps proffer relieve to such families by propagating WHO guidelines, tools, and evidence-based suggestions to help stop and care for preterm babies.

Ezeaka said that the direct medical causes of prematurity include malnutrition and anaemia, teenage pregnancy and multi parity, pre-eclampsia, infections like malaria, Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) among others.

“The underlying causes of preterm births included poverty, poor literacy, poor or no antenatal care attendance, and poor access to skilled health providers among others.

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“Chronic illnesses like diabetes, kidney diseases, heart diseases, hypertension, sickle cell, undue stress, trauma, and hard labour during pregnancy could also lead to prematurity,” she said.

However, analyising preterm admission statistics from November 2019 to October 2020 at LUTH, Uzoamaka Nwgbo, resident doctor, LUTH shared that over the one year period, were 874 deliveries, 214 which is equivalent to 24.5% were preterm and 325were admitted.

She revealed that 151 which is equivalent to 70.6 percent of the preterm babies admitted were inborn neonatal ward of LUTH, of which 92 were male and 59 were females.

“Out of this number of babies 114(83%) were discharged and 25 (17%) died.

She added that out- born preterm admission in the facility during the one year period there were 399 out born neonatal admission.

“Of the 399, 134 (33.6%) were preterm neonates, 77 were male and 57 were females. 62 (46.3%) died,” said Nwgbo.

According to Nwgbo, the major challenge encountered in managing preterm is in the extreme Low Birth Weight (LBW), extreme preterm babies and challenges of respiratory support.

She added that shortage of skilled staff and non-availability of device for continuous monitoring also attribute to the fuelling of death of this preterm.

Also, Wasiu Adeyemo, chairman Medical Advisory Committee, CMAC, said even with the scarce resources in the country, LUTH has built a skilled team with speciality in managing preterms, saying the hospital would continue to give its best to the general public.