NO BABY BOOM!
Births continue to decline despite COVID-19 forcing people to spend more time at home
THOUGH there were speculations in some quarters at the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic last year that containment measures — lockdowns, curfews and work-from-home orders — would lead to more babies being born this year, several hospitals have so far registered a decline in the number of births.
In fact, the numbers from five of the country’s hospitals for the first four months of 2021 appear to be in keeping with the downward trend in births that Jamaica has seen, at least over the last three years for the same period. Statistics obtained from the Registrar General’s Department (RGD), showing the birth numbers for the four-month period from January to April in 2018, 2019 and 2020, revealed that the country registered a total of 10,446 births, 10,375 births, and 10,188 births, respectively.
Dr Jordan Hardie, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Contemporary Medical Affiliates, told the Jamaica Observer that he had projected an increase in the number of births, especially with the work-from-home order that was encouraged from the early days of the pandemic.
“With people being more at home, the thought, initially, was that they would have more opportunities [for reproduction] and, of course, we thought by working from home, work would interfere less with relationships, but that’s not what we found,” he explained.
“Many of them actually worked more with the work-from-home orders in place. As opposed to packing up and leaving work, work was always there [at home], so they’d just take a break and [then] they were back to work. That caused some amount of relationship discord,” Dr Hardie added.
The five health-care facilities from which the
Jamaica Observer obtained statistics, and which are showing a decline in the number of births for the first four months of this year when compared to the corresponding period last year, are Spanish Town, Princess Margaret, Andrews Memorial and Victoria Jubilee hospitals as well as the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI).
Births at Spanish Town Hospital reduced from 1,370 in 2020 to 1,278 this year, while births at Princess Margaret Hospital dropped from 266 last year to 242 for January to the end of April 2021. At Andrews Memorial Hospital there was a total of 191 births during the period last year, but this year has seen a total of 174 births, and at the UHWI there was a decrease from 502 for the four-month period in 2020 to 471 births for the corresponding period this year.
Meanwhile, senior medical officer at Victoria Jubilee Hospital Dr Garth Mcdonald reported that there was a total of 2,153 births during the period last year and a total of 1,930 for the same period this year.
A final-year student at the University of Technology, Jamaica, who asked to be identified as Asha, is one of the mothers who gave birth at Victoria Jubilee Hospital in January. She told the Observer that she got pregnant during the novel coronavirus pandemic because she was spending a lot of time at home.
“The COVID-19 measures would have contributed to the reasons I got pregnant, because otherwise I would have been at school. I would not have had that free time to spend at home as I would be busy with schoolwork and spend a lot of time travelling, too,” she said.
Despite Asha’s experience seemingly supporting the speculations about a boom in births, the numbers so far this year show a decline. In an interview with the Observer, portfolio director of the Health Promotion and Prevention Unit at the National Family Planning Board (NFPB) Andrea Campbell suggested that the decline could be linked to a high uptake of contraceptives amid the measures implemented to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.
“We have been doing a lot of campaigns around condom use within the space of the lockdown, so let us hope that they are working. If we are saying that there has been a decrease, and we know that people are staying home and having more sex, then probably they are using contraceptives,” she suggested.
Campbell explained that individuals have been requesting long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), which allows pregnancy after discontinuance.
Examples of LARC include the intrauterine contraceptive device (IUD) — a small, flexible, T-shaped device which is inserted into the uterus and lasts for 10 years — and Jadelle, an implant that is inserted under the skin of the inner side of the upper arm that lasts for five years.
“We know that there has been an increase in the uptake of long-acting reversible contraception. If more people are requesting them then that could have probably led to a decrease,” said Campbell.
She also suggested that socio-economic challenges could have contributed to the decline in the number of births so far this year.
“Other factors would probably be the whole stress of being on [temporary] lockdown, curfew and unemployment. Maybe people are not really having sex as they usually would, as the whole idea of the COVID-19 pandemic has really kicked in and is taking a toll on them,” said Campbell.
More than a year since the country recorded its first confirmed case of the virus, Jamaicans are still being subjected to containment measures, albeit more relaxed than those imposed previously.