7,000 babies are stillborn every day

Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for highest number of stillbirths

About 7,200 babies are stillborn every day — some 2.6 million per year — and half of these deaths occur during delivery, according to a quintet of studies published by The Lancet yesterday.

The figures for 2015 represented a meagre drop from around 24.7 to 18.4 deaths for every 1,000 total births from 2000 to last year, the medical journal reported.

The overwhelming majority of stillbirths, about 98 per cent, occur in low-and medium-income countries.

“But the truly horrific figure is 1.3 million” stillbirths that occur during delivery, The Lancet editors Richard Horton and Udani Samarasekera wrote in a comment.

“The idea of a child being alive at the beginning of labour and dying for entirely preventable reasons during the next few hours should be a health scandal of international proportions. Yet it is not.”

Cutoff

For the purposes of the study, stillbirths were counted as foetuses lost during the final three-month trimester, or after 28 weeks of pregnancy.

Deaths before this cutoff are termed miscarriages.

The series found that prolonged pregnancy — delivery several days beyond the estimated birth date — was the main cause of stillbirths, contributing 14 per cent. Next in line were maternal health problems.

Nutrition, lifestyle factors such as obesity or smoking, and non-infectious diseases like diabetes, cancers or cardiovascular problems, each accounted for about 10 per cent of stillbirths.

Malaria infection accounted for about eight per cent of stillbirths and syphilis 7.7 per cent, the analysis showed.

Sub-Saharan Africa had more stillbirths than any other region.