KHMH Hosts First of its kind Conference on Premature Births and Risk Reduction

The Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital (KHMH) hosted a first-of-its-kind conference today, focusing on premature babies. The event gathered public and private sector health workers to discuss issues such as risk factors for premature births and the role of primary care in minimizing those factors. Neroli Williams, Manager of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the KHMH said that the conference was originally scheduled to be held on World Prematurity Day November 17 but was pushed back due to Tropical Storm Sara. Williams says it was important to hold the conference due to the number of premature births observed at the KHMH.

Neroli Williams, NICU Manager, KHMH: “It’s the first of a kind in Belize. Every year we celebrate World Prematurity Day on the 17th of November but because of the hurricane this year, it had to be postponed until today. The significance is because we are having an increased number of premature births. Within the last year, it has decreased by 2%, but it’s nothing significant. Every year we celebrate the day by bringing back babies to the NICU or to KHMH to celebrate and to see how they are doing so that they could express their journey from birth until however old a child is and share their experiences with each other, the parents. But despite doing that for the last seven years we have still not seen a decrease in premature births. So hence we decided to do a conference and target mostly the healthcare workers of this country, primarily the public health department because primary health, primary care is the first encounter of these pregnant ladies. So if we could improve on our primary care delivery then we may have a decrease in the premature births. Mommies, we have a lot of diabetes and hypertension in the country, and it’s on the rise. We’ve seen it in very young people. Even some children are developing diabetes from a very young age. So if we could get them to book clinic early or their first visit that we call booking can be done early at least within the first two months then the care could continue and we could see if there is any risk factors that can be addressed.”

As the only Neonatal ICU in the country, the KHMH handles all premature cases where the newborn is critical. Williams spoke on some of the risk factors for premature babies in and out of the hospital.

Neroli Williams, NICU Manager, KHMH: “It all depends on the age of the prematurity. For example, a baby 34 weeks of gestation has a better outcome or a better chance of survival than one of 28 weeks or 30 weeks. In Belize, our age that we expect viability is 28 weeks. In first world countries it’s 24 so we’re still like a month behind. We do have babies surviving 26 and 27 weeks but it’s not what we determine as viability in Belize. But the risk factors the developmental milestone might be delayed and we will not know that until the age comes for that milestone. For example when they’re starting to talk or walk or read, we may not know that at birth or at hospitalization until that age is reached like one year or nine months or sometimes two years, four years, it all depends. And some of the risks that we see with them while in hospital we spoke about what we may see after discharge, but they may not tolerate their feeds well, they may develop infections, their immunity is low, they may have bleeding in the brain, the gut, the lung, they may have seizures. We all know that seizures affect the brain, so we don’t know to what extent the brain may be affected and that can affect them later on in life as well.”

The conference was held at the Ramada Princess Hotel in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Wellness and UNICEF Belize. The World Health Organization notes that around 13 million babies are born prematurely each year.