Prematurity Drives Alarming Child Mortality in Belize

But the concerns don’t end there. The same survey also highlights troubling child mortality trends, showing that fourteen out of every thousand Belizean children die before age five, with prematurity driving most of those deaths. Health officials say premature births account for roughly sixty percent of under‑five fatalities. Together, the findings paint a stark picture of the challenges facing Belize’s children.

 

On The Phone: Dr. Natalia Beer, Maternal & Child Health Technical Advisor, MOHW

“The major cause of, of death, and this is worldwide, not only in believes, is prematurity. And the prematurity mean a baby. Every baby that is born before thirty-seven weeks of pregnancy, and this represents worldwide around ten percent, we are between eight and nine percent. Our total leg births that are premature. Now, the problem with the prematurity is that many of the organs are immature. At birth, we have the lungs, the brain, the liver, that are not fully developed, and then this alone increase the risk for respiratory distress. It increases the risk for infections. And it increases the risk for neurological problems. The next factor is low birth weight and low. Low birth weight can be found in premature babies as well as babies at term. And this low birth weight increase the risk for complications. The percentage of under five deaths that we have recorded related to prematurity is sixty percent. So we know that the earlier the child is born, the higher the risk of losing those babies.”

 

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