Baby Bringing Stork is All Sick

At the beginning of the year Atyrau was in the center of the scandal – public prosecutor's audit revealed high mortality rate among babies in maternity hospitals (see AkZhaik # 8 dd. 23.02.2012, “Mortality Increased Together with Standards”). Prosecutors promised then to identify the reasons. But after a while this story was all forgotten.

It emerged that the audit results were ready after a month, but for some reasons this information hasn’t reached mass media.

To recall, the prosecutor's office paid a close attention to two maternity hospitals in the oblast center. In the middle of February the doctors were trying to explain to the auditors the reasons why the newborns were dying (13 newborns died). And, according to the version of the oblast department of health care, they managed to prove that it wasn’t their fault.

- “Yes, there was one fact when our medical employee stated the cause of death as "pneumonia", but actually it was the case of congenital pneumonia, and there is a big difference. We imposed an administrative punishment on her. As a whole, infantile mortality is caused by the health state of mothers, and not unprofessionalism of our doctors or the conditions of the maternity hospital,” - states Dina KAMELOVA, Deputy Head of Health Care Department of Atyrau Oblast. –According to our data 55, 3 % of women of reproductive age suffer from anemia, 20 % - from extragenital and 9, 2 % - from urogenital pathology. All this combined led to premature birth which make 15, 4 % of all childbirth. Due to low weight of prematurely born babies and underdevelopment of their internal organs, they are often subject to such diseases as pre-natal congenital pneumonia, lungs atelectasis, intra-ventricular hemorrhage.

Health Care Department informed that it is improving its work on reduction of child mortality. 15 experts in the field of mother and the child health care were currently trained abroad - in Israel, Lithuania, Russia and Belarus.

The question stays open why women of Atyrau have such a bouquet of diseases and are unable to carry babies and to give birth in the right time. But this is another topic.

By Anastasia PASTUKHOVA