Publication: Preterm Birth, Exasperation to the South Asian Countries
Date
2022
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Kathmandu University
Abstract
ABSTRACT
When a child is born before 37 weeks or 259 days of pregnancy, it is termed as pre-
term birth. Pre-term birth is prevalent in both developed and developing country.
However, difference lies in their survival. In lower and middle income countries,
most preterm babies die due to lack of even simple interventions. India ranks top in
the world for deaths due to complications of preterm birth. Similarly, other South
Asian countries, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Nepal rank 3rd, 6th, 9th and
20th in the same. The aim of this review paper is to provide a landscape analysis on
the burden of pre-term birth and challenges in the context of South Asian region.
Databases such as PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar were searched from 2000
to 2020 and 27 articles are included in the study. It was found that pre-term birth
causes huge burden in the form of morbidity, mortality as well as socio economic
losses. Preterm birth was associated with increased sepsis, cardiovascular disease,
respiratory illness, hypothermia, neurological and gastrointestinal complications.
South Asian countries have distinct challenges in eliminating or reducing pre-
term births which are: poor quality health surveillance data, inadequate trained
health workforce, insufficient finance and funding, service delivery and other
methodological challenges. Ending pre-term birth is important as it is directly
related to Sustainable Development Goal 3. Therefore, there should be increase
in priority given to increase financing, quality data gathering, adopting innovative
measures as well as joint efforts of all the sectors to control the pre-term birth.
KEY WORDS
Burden, Challenges, Pre-term birth, South Asian countries
Description
Acharya R,1,2 Panthee A,2 Basnet R,2 Adhikari S,2 Ghimire N2
1Institute of Medicine, Tribhuvan University
2Nepal Health Research Council, Kathmandu, Nepal
Keywords
Burden, Challenges, Pre-term birth, South Asian countries