Fetoinfantile losses — from myths to reality

Abstract

The literature review shows fetoinfantile losses to characterize not only the health of the population and its reproductive potential, but also the social and economic living conditions of the population, the medical care quality, the implementation of modern technologies. They are believed to have a significant impact on basic socio-demographic indicators. According to WHO recommendations, this integrated indicator should be used as a new methodological approach to analyze the activities of maternity and childhood services, to develop the most effective management decisions for the prevention of infant and perinatal mortality. The review presents the features of birth registration in Russia since the adoption by the WHO General Assembly in 1950 of definitions and criteria of such perinatal concepts as “live-born”, “stillborn”, “viable fetus”, “abortion” corresponding to world ethical concepts to the present. The complete transition to international birth registration criteria in 2012 was the most important event in the further reduction of fetoinfantile losses in the country. Thus, the inclusion of infants with extremely low body weight in the number of live births required the use of the highest technologies not only to prevent death, but also their disability, domestic statistics indicators of fetoinfantile losses have become more reliable and comparable to international ones. In the context of the new requirements to birth registration, an analysis of the infant mortality accounting in the regions of Russia was carried out according to five specially developed criteria, as well as the reconstruction of its indicators using a recalculation model for the level of postnatal mortality. It was established that the unreliable presentation of information continues - there is a repetition of the trends observed in previous years, only the extreme weight category has changed. Provided data show the validity of the proposed infant mortality undercount criteria, allowing researchers to recommend them for use in practical healthcare.