•According to the report, almost 1.9 million babies were stillborn at 28 weeks or more of gestation in 2021.
•Every 37 seconds a baby dies during labour as a stillbirth.
Image: PEXELS
The World Health Organization and Unicef have called for renewed efforts to end preventable stillbirths.
This is contained in the agencies’ latest report, ‘Never Forgotten; The situation of stillbirth around the globe: Report of the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation, 2022.’
Stillbirth refers to a baby born with no signs of life at 22 or more completed weeks of gestation.
The two UN agencies have called on investment in universal access to high-quality and timely antenatal and delivery care as an essential first step to ending stillbirths.
The report estimates that Kenya recorded 27,720 stillbirths in 2021, an increase from 26,985 in 2010 and 24,599 in 2000.
The country recorded an annual reduction rate of 0.6 per cent between 2000 and 2021.
According to the report, more than 5,000 babies are stillborn at 28 weeks or more of gestation on a daily basis, or 1.9 million every year globally; two in five of these babies die during labour.
“Every 37 seconds a baby dies during labour as a stillbirth. And while some progress has been made in reducing the global stillbirth rate, gains are uneven,” the report reads.
Mothers in sub-Saharan Africa and those from the most vulnerable groups have the highest risk of losing their babies to stillbirth.
The report links the stillbirths numbers to the Covid-19 disruptions to healthcare services, weak social protection systems, rising poverty levels and economic uncertainty.
“Though the scale of these deaths continues to be enormous, stillbirth remains nearly invisible in personal and public conversations,” the report warns.
“Efforts to prevent stillbirths are frequently left out of maternal health policies and programmes, even though so many of these deaths are in fact preventable."
According to the report, almost 1.9 million babies were stillborn at 28 weeks or more of gestation in 2021.
This means that for every 1,000 births, 14 were stillbirths or 1 in 72 babies were stillborn.
The report says most of these children would be alive today had there been access to high-quality care during childbirth such as timely monitoring and interventions.