Deaths of born and unborn “double in Lisbon region in 2023”
After two years in which state obstetric services in Portugal have been in a state of controlled chaos due to the chronic shortage of specialised doctors, the results appear to have come horribly home to roost: the number of foetal and infant deaths in the capital DOUBLED in 2023.
The data is part of the latest report by the Health Regulatory Authority, and compares figures with 2022.
As SIC Notícias reports, 58 labour wards and neonatology services from the state, private and social sectors were monitored – and what the exercise revealed was that between 2022 and 2023, there were 312 foetal deaths (meaning pregnancies that failed before term) and 426 deaths of babies up to 28 days old – a total of 738 instances where pregnant women did not ‘give birth’ to healthy babies.
SIC’s report does not give the comparison with the years 2020-2021. But it highlights the very significant number of failed pregnancies and infant deaths in the Lisbon area.
“Last year, the Lisbon and Tejo Valley region recorded the highest number: 238 foetuses and babies did not survive to 28 days, compared to 132 in 2022.
“Foetal and neonatal deaths accounted for 0.66% of all births” in Lisbon, adds SIC. “This is in a region of the country where some maternity wards have been operating for almost two years under a model of alternating closures due to a lack of doctors to fill the rota”.
Experts however are not prepared to cite the frenetic opening and closing of maternity units yet. They say that “context is needed to understand the data”.
For instance, pediatrician Alberto Caldas Afonso of the commission for women’s, children’s and adolescent health, believes there could be two explanations for these figures: one being that the majority of ‘at risk’ births choose Lisbon/ Porto for their maternity care, another that there are a large number of children being born these days to ‘non-Portuguese’ who often turn up at maternity units with no records to show the medical accompaniment they may have had during their pregnancies.
Alberto Caldas Afonso made no reference to stories that have filled the media, particularly during the summer when the ‘crisis’ in maternity care was at its most acute.
SIC concludes that experts like Afonso are “calling for the data to be analysed separately, and then properly studied”.
Source material: SIC Notícias
