How to reduce preterm births.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20342108

Summary:

Every year fifteen million babies are born before 37 weeks of pregnancy. Doctors think this number can be reduced by at least 5%. This could be done by stopping multiple IVF pregnancies.
Experts want to perform more research to find out how to reduce the number of babies born early because this is also the second most common cause of death for children aged five.

Experts say that even in developing countries premature births can be reduced easily.

Two simple interventions are stopping smoking and promoting single pregnancies in IVF treatments. This alone could prevent a few thousand premature births each year.

Some doctors’ say that the effect of preventing preterm birth is very small. They hope to reduce the preterm births in developed counties to 5% and that this would lead to solutions in lower income countries. This should make a big difference on the costs on public health care too.

The effects on both mothers an child are huge. 

Opinion:
I think that if there are measures that can be taken in preventing preterm births this should be done. The effects on children are very high. The first years of these young children are problematic as in eating and drinking because they have not learnt to swallow properly due to all the tubes that took care of their need for food. Researchers found out that a lot of these children have a sort of learning disability. They are behind in social skills too. So not only the effects on health care costs right after these children are born are high even when they grow up they need more special care than children born at a pregnancy term of 37 weeks and up.
There will always be children born prematurely, but if mothers stop smoking before getting pregnant the risk of getting a preterm child is already smaller. In developing counties this kind of information should be spread widely. In developed countries there should be a stop on putting back more than two embryos’ when women have IVF treatment because women who carry more than one child have a higher risk on giving birth before the 37^th week of their pregnancy. Caesareans are one of the problems too, in some countries babies are born this way even though there was no medical need for it.
I hope to give birth in April to a healthy baby born in the most natural way as possible.