The number of births during an airplane flight has been increasing for ten years. More than half of these births take place without the assistance of health professionals.
Is there a doctor on the plane? The question is asked to passengers in the event of discomfort in the cabin, but also more and more frequently in the event of… giving birth in mid-flight! Between 1929 and 2018, 74 babies were born on planes operating commercial flights and in 26% of cases the flight was diverted for this urgent reason. Two of these babies died shortly after delivery.
Never trivial events
These figures of births known during commercial flights have just been revealed by the Journal of Travel Medicine. They show that, although these events are not so frequent, they are never insignificant and that they seem to have been on the rise for the past ten years, obviously linked to the development of air transport.
“Insufficient” medical kits
This poses the problem of the possible systematic presence on board of the devices of health professionals. Because the study of the Journal of Travel Medicine shows that of these 74 births, medical assistance was provided in less than one in two cases by doctors, nurses or flight crew, the latter most often intervening in a great improvisation! And the JTM study points out that the medical kits for providing first aid on board are most often “exhausted and insufficient” in the event of an in-flight childbirth.
The babies born in the sky were for 10% of them in the last two weeks of gestational age which varies from 25 to 38 weeks, 16% in the last four weeks, 19% about a month before the term and 12% before the gestational age of 32 weeks.
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