Title:
Report Calls Attention to Millions of Preterm Births
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Technology Report.
See text below
Text:
Each year millions of babies are born too soon and
too small. Premature or preterm births are defined
as births that take place earlier than thirty-seven
weeks of pregnancy.
Prematurity is the leading cause of death in newborn
babies. More than one-fourth of the four million
newborns who die each year around the world were
born too early.
Preterm babies that survive can suffer a lifetime of
serious health conditions. The examples include
cerebral palsy, blindness, hearing problems and
learning disabilities. Families and communities face
emotional, physical and financial costs.
Christopher Howson is the vice president for global
programs at the March of Dimes, a nonprofit group.
His group and the World Health Organization recently
published a report called "The Global and Regional
Toll of Preterm Birth."
He said: The crisis of preterm birth is
under-recognized, undercounted, undervalued and
underfunded. This reports shows that thirteen
million babies are born every year preterm, and that
over a million of those babies die as a result of
being born too early."
And these are just estimates; the true numbers could
be even higher.
More than eighty-five percent of preterm births
happen in Africa and Asia. Africa has the highest
rate, with about four million cases each year. Chris
Howson says many of the causes of preterm births are
related to poverty and weak health-care systems.
He says these include the poor overall health and
nutrition of women. Infectious diseases. Lack of
family planning. And the lack of good prenatal care
programs that might identify problems early on in
pregnancy.
Preterm births are a problem not just in the
developing world.
The combined rate in the United States and Canada is
the second highest in the world. Preterm birth rates
in the United States have increased thirty-six
percent in the last twenty-five years.
There are two reasons for this: An increase in
pregnancies among women over age thirty-five. And an
increase in the use of fertility treatments that can
produce multiple births.
One of the United Nations Millennium Development
Goals for two thousand fifteen is to reduce death
rates in young children by two-thirds.
Chris Howson says premature births must be reduced
if that goal is to be met. What is being done about
this issue? That will be our subject next week.
And that's the VOA Special English Development
Report.
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personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
