From AFP, BBC:

More than a third of children born before the seventh month of pregnancy are disabled, and the degree of disability rises the earlier they are born, according to a new study published in the Lancet (subscription required).

The investigation by French researchers was prompted by the fact that more and more children born prematurely are able to survive, thanks to better-equipped hospitals and better-trained staff.

A team led by Pierre-Yves Ancel and Beatrice Larroque of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research looked at the health of 1,817 five-year-old French children who had been born between 22 and 32 weeks of pregnancy.

… ‘These results raise questions about health and provision of rehabilitation services, and the cost of these services to families and society,” wrote the study’s authors.

Full-term pregnancies last about 40 weeks.

See related story: Survival of early babies doubles, from the [UK] Telegraph.

The abortion debate is reignited today as figures show that survival rates of babies born very prematurely have doubled in the past 20 years.

A study at one of Britain’s top neonatal units found that one third of babies born between 22 and 25 weeks’ gestation survived in the early 1980s but this had risen to 71 per cent by the late 1990s.

The biggest improvements were among the 24 and 25-week babies.

Campaigners have already called for the 24-week abortion limit to be lowered, but experts have previously argued there has been little improvement in the chances of babies born very early.

The findings are set to spark a further row over abortion as MPs are tabling amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill to either liberalise terminations or restrict them. The 24-week limit was set in 1990.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 2:39 pm and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, disabilities, economics, medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post