World Premature Child’s Day is a date that was originally promoted by the European Foundation for the Care of Premature Infants (EFCNI), along with other co-founders and the World Health Organization (WHO).
This event tries to disseminate how to prevent premature births due to their high risk of mortality, to help children and their families who may go through these circumstances. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), every year some 15 million premature children are born in the world and, according to data from 2015, there were one million deaths in children under 5 years of age due to complications related to prematurity.
Children born before the 37th week of gestation are considered premature, since a full-term pregnancy must reach 40 weeks. But the risk of giving birth exists from week 28.
Why are babies born prematurely?
Premature birth has multiple origins. It can be on the maternal side such as gestational diabetes, hypertension, eclampsia, bleeding before delivery; or the baby’s own causes such as growth problems in the intrauterine stage or its genetics; or problems in the development of the placenta.
In most cases, a child is born prematurely mainly due to the mother’s ‘lifestyle’ during pregnancy, something that is even more complicated in low-income people, since the problem can be present from before due to poor nutrition, malnutrition, anemia, among others.
