In 1994 Belarus passed to criteria of WHO according to the accounting of newborns. Babies weighing 500 g and more, appeared in term of 22 weeks and more, began to be considered living people and all efforts for their salvage are made (before fixed as late abortions).
Annually in our country over 5 000 children are born before the term, from them more than 250 have the extremely low body weight (ELBW) — under the kilogram.
Every tenth part of the babies who are born in the State scientific-practical center “Mother and Child”, are born before term. In Belarus 63% of prematurely born babies are born with the weight from 2 000 to 2 499 g, 21% — from 1 500g to 1 999 g, 11% from 1 000 to 1 499 and 5% from 500 to 999 g.
The problem of premature birth has a big social aspect. Nearly 60 — 70% of an early neonatal mortality, 50% of neurologic diseases, including a cerebral palsy, vision disorders (fall to the share of prematurely born children up to a blindness), hearing (up to deafness), a serious chronic illness of lungs, are prematurely born babies. Frequency of premature births in the world is 6 – 18%.
In last 20 years big success was achieved in nursing of the children who were born with low body weight including deeply prematurely born babies. It is proved that even among babies with extremely low body weight – under 1000g survival can reach 70-80%. However, this success caused new problems bound to the subsequent serious deviations in development and health of such babies.
But their lives depend on how in time and adequately they were given primary reanimation help, nursed at the first and second stages, and also on a proper aftertreatment on early terms of development.