St Luke’s Hospital yesterday rebutted a story carried in a Maltese language newspaper, that said that the country had a high rate of infant mortality, by pointing out that this country does not permit abortion.

The press conference was held in reaction to a story which had said that, according to the State of the World’s Mothers report, Malta had the second highest infant mortality rate in the industrialised world.

Speaking to this newspaper, St Luke’s Superintendent Frank Bartolo said that while Malta had a rate of five infant deaths per 1,000 births, one had to bear in mind that abortion does not exist in Malta. He explained that statistics showed that half of those births were of malformed or disabled babies that simply could not survive.

“In Malta we do not have abortion and in other countries, foetuses that have no chance of survival are aborted,” he said.

Dr Bartolo explained that other factors were involved, such as very young first-time mothers giving birth with complications as well as the complete opposite – older first-time mothers whose babies automatically have a higher mortality rate. He also explained that obesity is another worrying factor in local pregnancies.

Malta still regarded itself as having a very good record in the field of infant mortality rates, said Dr Bartolo, and anyone who doubted this could read up on statistics on the World Health Organisation website.

In fact, the last WHO infant mortality rate report put Malta in 18th place in Europe out of some 52 countries. Malta came ahead of Greece, the UK and Denmark (next three) and behind Ireland, Portugal and Holland.