Stillbirth blot on India

THE TELEGRAPH
CALCUTTA, INDIA
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

New Delhi May 5:

India, China, Pakistan and Bangladesh account for half of an 
estimated 3.2 million stillbirths worldwide, says a study published this week.

The causes of a significant proportion of these stillbirths — defined as babies 
born dead during the last trimester of pregnancy — remain unknown, says the study 
by an international team of health researchers.

Cynthia Stanton at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US 
and her co-workers assessed data from 103 countries and developed a statistical 
model to arrive at an estimate for stillbirths worldwide.

“Our estimates suggest that more than 3.2 million babies are born dead every year, 
and the true figure is probably higher, given the limitations of the available 
data and the fact that stillbirths are under-reported,” the researchers said in 
a report in The Lancet.

Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia accounted for the highest rate of stillbirths — 
32 per 1,000 deliveries.

Around 51 per cent of all stillbirths occurred in four countries — India, China, 
Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Stillbirth rates were five times higher in developing countries (25 per 1,000 
deliveries) than in the developed ones (5 per 1,000 deliveries).

“The deaths of most of these babies are avoidable,” said the researchers. The low 
rates of stillbirth in the developed countries show that appropriate healthcare 
services can help reduce it.

They said the need to identify the causes of stillbirths is a step towards 
reducing them. However, “even in settings with the possibility of extensive 
investigation, the cause of death might not be established in a third of stillbirths”.

Independent studies in India have previously identified a number of factors that 
are believed to be contributing to stillbirths — adverse foetal growth, intrauterine 
growth retardation and iodine deficiency disorders.

Doctors at the NRS Medical College in Calcutta had a decade ago conducted one of 
the earliest systematic surveys of stillbirths and found that the rate was 
38 per 1,000 deliveries.