Kiev, Europe Brief News – A sharp rise has been reported in the number of premature births in some Ukraine.
Prenatal clinics in both Kharkiv and Lviv confirmed that the rate of preterm births has doubled or tripled in the past few weeks.
The doctors pointed to the stress and medical issues linked to the war.
Polina was born in Kharkiv’s regional perinatal clinic weighing just 630g (1.4lbs). The average weight for a full-term baby girl is five times that.
Viktoria, 800g (1.7lbs), was born in Lviv’s perinatal hospital in early March along with her twin sister Veronika, after her mother fled from Kyiv. She just passed her first kilogram.
These two little girls, one a refugee, the other struggling for life in a city bombarded by Russian forces, reveal the gruelling choices facing mothers and doctors here.
Iryna Kondratova, the medical director in charge of Polina’s care, told me premature births had jumped to three times their normal rate at her Kharkiv clinic, and now account for 50% of all deliveries.
While the percentage of premature births in her clinic has risen, Iryna says the total number of her patients has shrunk. As women flee the fighting in Kharkiv.
Across the country in Lviv, away from the front lines, they’ve seen an influx.
Viktoria’s mother, Iryna Zelena, fled to Lviv from Kyiv just before she gave birth. “We left because of mass shelling,” she says. “We’d been in a shelter all that time.”
She believes the stress of spending the first days of the war in a bunker contributed to her delivering Viktoria. And her twin sister Veronika – more than seven weeks early.
