If the infant mortality rate fell sharply from 2001 to 2005 in France, then until 2012, it started to rise again, according to a scientific study published in The Lancet on March 1. What are the causes ?
Infant mortality rate on the rise since 2012
Researchers from Inserm, the University of Paris, AP-HP and Nantes University Hospital, as well as scientists from the University of California analyzed Insee civil status data, between the years 2001 and 2019. In a study published on March 1 in The Lancetthe researchers note a clear increase in the mortality rate in France since 2012. Yet this rate had fallen sharply from 2001 to 2005, and even until 2012.”We were among the best students for a long time, then the trend has changed since 2005 and it goes back from 2012 to 2019″notes Martin Chalumeau, pediatrician and epidemiologist.
Thus, of the 14,622,096 live births recorded between 2001 and 2019, the authors of the study record 53,077 deaths of babies under one year old. This corresponds to an average infant mortality rate of 3.63 per 1,000 (compared to 3.32 in 2012). 24.4% of deaths occurred on the day of birth, and 47.8% of deaths occurred during the first week after birth (4 in boys, and 3.25 in girls). . “If we had the mortality rate of Sweden or Finland, there would be 1,200 deaths of children under 1 year less every year,” adds Martin Chalumeau, who is worried about these rising figures.
It is “primordial” to understand the causes
According to the authors of the study, it is essential to understand the causes of the increased death rate. For the time being, the latter recall that prematurity and congenital anomalies are among the factors linked to these early deaths. In addition, the maternal age, the BMI of the future mother as well as smoking during pregnancy increased during the study period. “It is essential to be able to explore in detail the causes of this increase by having, for example, systematic information on the precise medical and social circumstances of these deaths and by making this population, which is the most vulnerable, a real priority for research and public health, which is not currently the case”, concludes the researcher.