Premature deliveries on the rise in the UAE

Published Thursday, March 21, 2013

By Majorie van Leijen

Premature deliveries have been on the rise over the past few years, with more than 10 per cent of all babies born in the UAE delivered too soon.

Although public hospitals are expanding to deal with the increasing demand, private hospitals are lagging.

Partly due to the popularity of IVF treatment, premature delivery has become more common. When a baby is delivered prior to 37 weeks of gestation, it is born prematurely and health complications may occur.

In such cases, neonatal care is required. However, the number of hospitals equipped to deal with complicated cases is limited.

Latifa Hospital currently hosts a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) with 48 beds, yet it receives between 46 and 56 patients per day. Dr Abdulrahim Mustafawi, Director of Medical Affairs at the hospital said: “Presently Latifa Hospital has the largest NICU facility in the Middle-East. The 48-bed unit provides treatment and care for neonates from 24 weeks onwards. The hospital also manages genetic and metabolic cases.

"Since Latifa Hospital has an equipped NICU and an expert team of neonatal and maternity specialists, it receives a majority of the neonatal cases in the emirate, and it faces the pressure from the northern emirates too.”

According to Dr Mustafawi, the unit works on an average occupancy level of 130-140 per cent. In many cases, Latifa Hospital is the hospital of choice. But in a lot of other cases, the patients are referrals, from other hospitals that do not have the facilities to provide the best care after the baby is born prematurely.

"Latifa Hospital is the only hospital in Dubai that has the expertise to carry out surgeries on premature babies. Families register in one hospital, but at the moment of delivery they come to our hospital. I think around 30 per cent of all patients has come in on referral," added Dr Mustafawi.

The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) Charity Foundation to expand neonatal facilities within DHA hospitals.

As part of the MoU, MAF Charity Foundation will sponsor building the extension of the NICU at Latifa Hospital. The extension will help increase the capacity of beds in order to accommodate a higher number of premature newborns who need intensive care. The move will help provide an additional 18 NICU beds for pre-term babies.

Najib Al Khaja, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim Charity Foundation said: “We recognise the need to expand these facilities given that the demand for these services will increase in the future. We have seen the dedication and commitment of the medical staff and nurses of the NICU department at Latifa Hospital and we are keen to help them establish a state-of-the-art dedicated NICU building.”

In addition, Latifa is looking to recruit additional 90-95 nurses to strengthen the specialised team of 300 nurses, doctors, consultants and specialist that currently works at the unit. "Our staff sometimes works for 12 hours a day, instead of the normal eight hours," says Abdulrahim.

"There have been cases where we did not have enough beds, so we sent our staff to other hospitals to do a surgery."

(Home page image courtesy Shutterstock)

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