World Prematurity Day on November 17 is a day to increase awareness of premature birth, the disability caused by premature birth, and to talk about solutions to prevent it.

Globally 15 million babies are born prematurely each year (more than 1 in 10) and complications caused by preterm birth are the biggest cause of death and disability in children under the age of 5.

Babies born early have a higher chance of needing a special care nursery, higher rates of neurological impairment and lung disease and higher rates of developmental problems compared to those born after 37 weeks. In Western Australia the rates are still surprisingly high – about 3000 babies are born early each year.

Premature means the baby is born before 37 weeks of pregnancy. Of these early babies, the majority come between 32 and 36 weeks.

There are lots of risk factors associated with preterm birth:

• Smoking almost doubles the risk of an early baby
• Having twins or triplets or more, or having a very short interval between pregnancies
• Alcohol use in pregnancy
• Gestational Diabetes (diabetes of pregnancy)
• Infections like chlamydia
• Having had an early baby in a previous pregnancy
• Surgery to the cervix at any stage
• Aboriginal mums have double the chance of their babies coming early

When having a pregnancy appointment at SRMG your doctor will ask about/test for the above risk factors to help you to reduce your chance of preterm birth.

In Western Australia babies can survive with good outcomes when born from 23 and 24 weeks – in fact King Edward Memorial Hospital in Subiaco is one of the safest places a baby can come early. It is also the home of the preterm birth initiative, which reduced preterm birth by 8% the first year it was running (around 200 less early babies!).

The interventions that have rolled out around the state to achieve this include:

• A massive push to help pregnant mums to stop smoking
• Measuring the cervix at the 20 week anatomy scan and giving progesterone until 36 weeks if the cervix is found to be short
• Inserting a stitch to close the cervix if it is very short
• Giving progesterone to mums who have had an early baby before
• Encouraging obstetric doctors not to intervene to end a pregnancy until after the 38th week unless there is a very strong chance of complications if the pregnancy continues

If you would like to read more about world prematurity day visit: Life’s Little Treasures Foundation

Or the WA Preterm Birth Initiative: The Whole Nine Months

If you have not seen it already, there is a super cute Bluey episode called ‘Early Baby’ available for free on ABC iview which can help to introduce the topic to little ones – if you need an excuse!

This article has been written by Dr Marie Leknys.