The story appears on

Page C4

November 22, 2016

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Supplement

Healthy babies mean happy families

HEALTHCARE for mothers and infants looms large in pub­lic health policymaking.

Improved services and standards have helped lower the mortality of pregnant women in Shanghai to 6.66 for every 100,000, while the infant mortality rate has dropped to 4.58 per thousand. Both levels are in line with devel­oped countries, according to the city’s health and family planning commission.

Policies

Since 2003, the municipal govern­ment has been enacting three-year action plans for public health, listing women and children as a priority group. That focus has been expanded to include community healthcare centers.

The city has also introduced a unified maternity insurance system, a medical insurance scheme for chil­dren, and a fund for children who require hospitalization.

Standarized systems

Shanghai has also established five systems for standardized maternal and child services.

The first one is prenatal pregnancy risk assessment. Since 2008, the city had classified risks in five categories. Anetwork of risk monitoring and treatment was also established, with information compiled by community hospital doctors and midwives.

The second system focuses on timely treatment for pregnant women encountering problems. They are given an expedited channel for diagnosis and treatment.

Thirdly, citywide meetings are held every quarter for medical experts to review cases of maternal deaths, using criteria established by the World Health Organization. In addition, heads of obstetrics units at hospitals meet regularly to analyze assessment reports to discuss ways to improve treatment.

Fourthly, “safety offices” have been set up in obstetrics departments at 87 hospitals in the city. The offices are headed by hospital directors, who coordinate an overview of manage­ment and services.

The fifth system is aimed at professional recruitment. The city suffers from understaffing in obstetric and pediatric departments. The School of Medicine at Shanghai Jiao Tong University has restarted its major in pediatrics. The city has also initiated a program to advance those interested in obstetrics as a career, with 37 young doctors selected for a half-year of training.

Rescue centers

Shanghai has five rescue centers for emergency pregnancy and post-natal services, and six centers for group consultation and rescue of newborns. They provide a safety net­work to respond in a timely fashion in all 16 districts.

The centers draw doctors from dif­ferent hospital departments, forming a core group for consultation and treatment.

The government also allocated a special fund to benefit the medical staff who work in rescue-related services. Last year, each center was given 1.5 million yuan (US$220,000), and special intensive care unit for pregnant and post-natal women was set up at Renji Hospital, with 5 mil­lion yuan in funding.

To date, the centers have treated more than 3,400 pregnant and post-natal women, and more than 22,000 infants in critical condition, with more than 90 percent in both catego­ries making full recoveries.

New family planning policy

To encourage young people to have children at timely ages and discour­age late marriages and pregnancies, all couples are now given an extra seven days of leave for marriage and 30 extra days for maternal leave. New fathers are also granted 10 days of leave instead of three as in the past.

The average age of marriage in 2014 was 28 years old, and the aver­age age of women from registered households who delivered babies last year was almost 30, with the oldest being 51.

The older the pregnant woman, the higher the risks. Pregnant women now undergo risk assessments for early detection of problems.

Consultation services are also provided for couples thinking about having children. Some maternity hospitals, such as the Obstetric and Gynecology Hospital of Fudan University, also offer services for older women, including discussion of birth risks.

Birth defect prevention

Shanghai offers free health screen­ing to couples before marriage and pregnancy and a system for prenatal screening for Down’s syndrome.

All newborns also get free screening for congenital diseases and hearing disorders. Treatment for children with disorders is expanding.

Adhering to WHO guidelines, Shanghai has built a comprehensive and largely free system for services that range from pre-marriage exams to pregnancy monitoring, delivery and post-natal care.

In the past three years, the city has also launched a health assess­ment and treatment program for all disabled children.

Improving capacity

With the adoption of China’s new “two-child” policy, maternity beds are expanding in Shanghai.

Each of the three top maternity hospitals in the city have added 100 beds in recent years. Anew branch of the Shanghai First Maternity and Infant Hospital, one of the top three in the city, has opened in the Pudong New Area, with 350 beds.

Meanwhile, the city has also been encouraging downtown hospitals with relatively strong obstetric de­partments to increase their numbers of beds, and now requires major suburban hospitals to ensure that obstetric and pediatric beds account for at least 10 percent of the total.

Alliances have been established to give full play to medical resources. The No. 6 and No. 8 People’s Hos­pitals have joined hands, while the Obstetric and Gynecology Hospital of Fudan University has organized an obstetrics medical network with 12 hospitals to provide technical sup­port and management guidance.

The Shanghai University of Medicine and Health Sciences has introduced a major in midwivery, and the “Red Maple Award” has been established to encourage more medical staff to devote their careers to maternity and child healthcare services.




 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend