Between 2014 and 2016 an average of 337 babies were born pre-term each year, Health Minister Chris Fearne said this week.

He was replying to a Parliamentary Question by Partit Demokratiku MP Godfrey Farrugia.

Pre-term means babies born before 37 weeks.

The principal factors leading to these pre-term births were:  multiple pregnancies, IVF, chronic illness in the mothers, including high blood pressure and diabetes, and intrauterine growth retardation in the foetus.

A total of 13,343 babies were born in Malta between  2014 and 2016, Fearne said. 2,500 of these were born to foreign mothers.

Replying to another PQ, Fearne said 449 infants under the age of three were admitted to or transferred to the Neonatal Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (NPICU) in 2015. During that year the average bed occupancy stood at 81%

In 2016 there were 472 admissions and transfers to the NPICU and the average bed occupancy was 87%. The figures for 2017 are still being compiled.

Fearne told Farrugia that there are 13 resident doctors at the unit. Replying on the nurse to patient ratio, the health minister said this varied according to the patients’ conditions. Some infants require a 1:1 nurse to patient ratio while others may require high dependency care that does not require a 1:1 ratio. These ratios, he said, compare well to similar units abroad.

Farrugia also asked for the percentage and actual number of babies born with a congenital abnormality (anomalies or defects) in 2015, 2016 and 2017. He also asked how many babies had died during the neonatal period during the same timeframe.

Fearne said 393 babies (3%) had been born with a congenital anomaly (according to EUROCAT criteria) between 2013 and 2015.

12 of these were stillbirths and 14 died during the neonatal period (within 27 days from birth).

The main reasons were: multiple congenital anomalies, congenital heart defects, nervous system defects and chromosomal defects.