Discovering why children die

Approximately 2.6 million stillbirths occur globally each year; 95 percent in low- and middle-income countries. Knowledge of the causes is limited, something a Wits University-led study in Soweto hopes to change.

Sampling of brain, lung, and liver tissue using biopsy needles, and blood and cerebrospinal fluid collection, as well as an examination of the placenta, revealed a cause of stillbirth for 117 of the 129 cases investigated.

The study seems to indicate that the leading underlying causes of stillbirth are pregnancy-associated high blood pressure in the mom, cases where the placenta separates and there is bleeding, and also cases where the membranes of the foetus become inflamed due to a bacterial infection.

The leading immediate causes of stillbirth are when there are abnormally low levels of oxygen in the blood not long before birth, and in cases where there is an infection in the foetus caused by bacteria, including E.coli, enterococcus and Group B Streptococcus.

Infections also appear to be the main cause of neonatal deaths (where the baby is born alive but does not survive the first month of life). The study considered 153 neonatal deaths and showed that more than half of them (57,5 percent) were caused by infection. Nearly three-quarters (74,4 percent) of the 90 babies included in the study died because they had an infection they picked up in hospital, where they (and their moms) were exposed to bacteria that were resistant to various treatments.