The mortality rate of children at birth or in the first month of life fell across Europe between 2004 and 2010. This is what an Inserm study indicates.
This is news that will reassure future parents. Between 2004 and 2010, the rates of stillbirth (death at birth) and neonatal mortality (in the first 28 days following) fell by 17% and 29% respectively in all European countries.
Published on the Inserm website, the study Euro-Peristat is at the origin of this observation. Initially, she hypothesized that this decrease had mostly occurred in the countries with the highest death rates in 2004, “because they were the ones with the most room for improvement possible.”
But the published analysis calls into question this hypothesis: “the decline in mortality is not correlated with the level of mortality in 2004”, reports Jennifer Zeitlin, coordinator of the project. As a result, significant disparities in mortality persist: in 2010, stillbirths ranged from 1.5 to 4.3 per 1,000 total births and neonatal mortality between 1.1 to 4.4 per 1,000.
To understand this general decline, the researchers focused on prematurity, one of the main risk factors for death at birth: “Not only did the percentage of children born preterm not change over this period, but also the drop in mortality observed concerns both children born at term and very premature babies who are the most at risk of mortality, ”explains Jennifer Zeitlin. For this researcher, this suggests that an overall improvement in the quality of care and a dissemination of best practice recommendations has occurred for the whole of Europe.
The Dutch example
Reassuring results which raise several questions, recognizes the team, first of all that of the context of pregnancies: “Smoking among pregnant women has decreased overall in Europe, while obesity and the age of mothers are increasing. These parameters probably influence the perinatal mortality figures, ”they indicate. Second question mark: “What health policies have contributed to these changes?” ”
To these questions, scientists provide the first answers, “in the Netherlands for example, the drop in stillbirths occurred after the establishment of a national audit of perinatal deaths and the strengthening of prevention policies. “. “It is important and useful to understand what happened in each country, in order to transpose the practices that seem relevant,” they explain.
Finally, a last question is raised, is there a threshold death rate or an incompressible number of deaths that we cannot prevent? Countries, such as Finland and Sweden where mortality was already very low, experienced declines between 2004 and 2010, and suggest that gains are therefore still possible.
.
