Improving Survival Rates for Premature Infants in Great Britain

"Survival rates for premature babies can be higher with better staffing and resources, study says Consistent staffing, resources and treatment policies can bring about declines in the death rate of the most premature babies, researchers argue today."
     Thisislondon.co.uk

"The dispute over the 24-week abortion limit has been fuelled by the publication of figures from a leading premature-baby unit showing a dramatic increase in survival of babies born at 25 weeks or under."
     The Independent

In very short order, Members of the British Parliament will debate the status of abortion for the first time in almost 20 years. Pro-lifers have sought to use the discussion to attempt to rein in the nation's laissez faire abortion law. Pro-abortionists want to make it even easier for women to abort, a.k.a. increase the number of dead babies. Approximately 200,000 babies are lost to abortion each year in Britain.

Abortions through the 28th week of pregnancy were permitted by the landmark 1967 Abortion Act. The law was amended in 1990, supposedly to limit the upper limit to 24 weeks to reflect that premature babies could survive earlier. There was a gigantic loophole, however. Abortions were permitted if there was a "substantial risk of fetal handicap," which has been defined to include cleft palettes and hair lips.

Nonetheless, the debate has focused on the question of lowering the 24 week limit to 22 or 20 weeks, spurred on by many factors but especially by the humanizing impact of 3-D color sonograms. Pro-abortionists have vigorously contested a second factor, something obvious to an American audience: thanks to developments in fetal medicine younger and younger babies are surviving, many of them thriving.

That's the background to a stunning study released yesterday from the prestigious neonatal unit at University College London hospital (UCLH]. We learn that survival rates for severely premature babies have more than doubled between 1981 and 2000--from 32% to 71%--for infants born between 22 and 25 weeks. Included in these figures are babies born in other hospitals and transferred to UCLH for intensive care.

The difference at UCLH is staffing levels, resources, and treatment, said Professor John Wyatt. According to a press release, Professor Wyatt, "a UCLH consultant and professor at the UCL EGA Institute for Women's Health, in conjunction with the hospital's neonatal team, and is part of a larger, ongoing follow-up programme for all extremely premature babies cared for at UCLH."

Dr Jane Hawdon, UCLH clinical director for women's health, explained, "These results are down to the joint working of skilled and specialist teams in maternity and neonatal care including the establishment of perinatal networks so the right babies are cared for in the right place.

Dr. Hawdon added, ""UCLH significantly increased its resources for providing neonatal care between 1981 and 2000, which included employing more staff and bringing in state-of-the-art equipment."

In addition, "Technical advances in neonatal care - such as improved ventilation and nutrition - have also contributed, as has the close communication between the maternity and neonatal teams so you can plan the best time of delivery for mother and baby."

Pro-abortionists have consistently insisted that there has been no real change in medicine's capacity to help severely premature babies survive. Prof. Wyatt addressed that "recent debate" yesterday.

"A previous study of all extremely premature infants born alive in the UK and Ireland … gave substantially lower survival rates than we report here, and it has been argued that there has been no improvement in survival across the country as a whole since EPICure [an earlier study] was undertaken in 1995," he said.

"However, studies which average the results from a large number of maternity units obscure the effects of very marked variations in resources, staffing and experience in the care of extremely premature infants," Prof. Wyatt explained. "It is also plausible that ethical and clinical policies vary between different units and there is published evidence to show that this will have an effect on survival rates."

The results of study ended in 2000. "It is now 2008 and many units across the world are reporting even better outcomes," said Nadine Dorries, a Tory MP and former nurse.

Mrs. Dorries is a member of the Commons science and technology committee "and produced a minority report when the main committee concluded there was no evidence to back a law change," Thislondon.co.uk reported.

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