NAIROBI: Medical experts now claim complications related to premature births are the leading cause of death in children under the age of five.
The medical experts converged for a three-day Preterm Birth Initiative-East Africa (PTBI) meeting 2016 in Nairobi last week. The meeting was spearheaded by research institutions including University of California San Francisco (UCSF), Aga Khan University, Kenya Medical Research Institute, Makerere University and the University of Rwanda.
Health Principal Secretary Nicholas Muraguri said an estimated 193,000 children are born prematurely in Kenya every year.
He said the Government was looking for interventions to end complications related to preterm births, adding that the free maternity care by the Government was a great milestone.
"The Government is looking into how to provide antenatal and postnatal care for free in order to address this matter," said Dr Muraguri.
Marleen Temmerman, chairman of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Aga Khan University Hospital and director, Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health at the university, noted that the country was not doing well in preterm births.
According to statistics, Kenya is ranked 15th out of 188 countries in the world with the highest number of preterm births.
"Our goal is to promote in-depth conversations between the University of California San Francisco and its East Africa partners, and to hold discussions to describe current knowledge, identify gaps and generate new solutions to preterm births. Kenya is not doing well because it is among the top 15 countries with high cases of preterm births," Prof Temmerman said.
A full-term pregnancy takes 40 weeks whereas premature babies are born before 37 weeks of pregnancy.
"Babies born too early may not be fully developed. They can have serious health problems at birth and many of them die, especially the very preterm (born at less than 28 weeks of pregnancy). They may also develop complications that can last a lifetime. The risk of health problems is greatest for babies born before 34 weeks of pregnancy," she added.
Although she noted that it was normal for pregnant women to have painful contractions during the early stages of pregnancy, they should, however, see a doctor if the contractions became regular, lasting every two to three minutes while at rest.
Almost one million children die each year due to complications of preterm birth.