HENRYLITO D. TACIO THINK

ON THESE!

There are times when appointments are postponed or cancelled. This makes some people fret if not furious. But there are times also that such postponement or cancellation is a blessing in disguise.

It happened to me recently when a person I was supposed to interview cancelled our meeting due to some unavoidable circumstances. Instead of getting infuriated, I welcomed it with gladness since I can now attend the birthday party of my niece who would turn three.

While having fun with my siblings, nieces and nephews, and other guests who attended the birthday party, I was saddened by the fact that not all children like my niece have the opportunity of having such a gaiety celebration. In fact, some of these children don’t make it at all.

A new report which we received recently said that one million tiny lives, who are born prematurely, die each year. This is equivalent to around one in 10 babies born early (before 37 weeks of pregnancy) around the globe.

In the Philippines, over 60,000 children die every year before their fifth birthday because of complications from premature birth, intrapartum complications, and infectious diseases. Over 25,000 are stillborn every year.

Almost 60% of Filipino children who die before their fifth birthday are newborns, said the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)-Philippines.

Born too soon: decade of action on preterm birth, produced by two United Nations agencies –UNICEF and World Health Organization (WHO) – in tandem with Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), considered this situation as “silent emergency.”

According to the new report, this “silent emergency” of preterm birth has long been under-recognized in its scale and severity. As a result, the progress in improving children’s health and survival has been impeded.

The report includes updated estimates from WHO and UNICEF, prepared with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, on the prevalence of preterm births. Overall, it finds that preterm birth rates have not changed in any region in the world in the past decade, with 152 million vulnerable babies born too soon from 2010 to 2020.

“Preterm birth is now the leading cause of child deaths, accounting for more than 1 in 5 of