With some 5.420 couples assisted at family planning consultations in 2016, and 10 births achieved in the Attention to the Infertile Couple (API), the work to promote fertility and birth rate is strengthened in the province of Santiago de Cuba.
Yofaidy Pérez, a member of the Maternal and Child Program in the territory, explained that during this period, increased the number of couples interested in evaluating their preconceptional reproductive risk and wanted to be informed about the decision to have a baby, for the sake of a satisfactory pregnancy, for the benefit of the child and mother.
One of the objectives in 2017 is to consolidate the attention of preconceptional vulnerabilities from the Primary Health Care (PHC), in order to identify and modify conditions that may affect the pregnant woman and her offspring, and, in addition, with a view to know and value the best time for healthy procreation, she stressed.
Perez said that family planning actions - available from the PHC and specialized consultations in polyclinics - as well as health promotion actions carried out at the intersectoral level, influenced last year in the province to reduce abortion rates and Pregnancy in adolescents.
Regarding API, Perez said that the 10 births in 2016 were made possible by the work carried out in the consultations of that specialty, available in each locality and the Center for Assisted Reproduction of Low Technology in the General Hospital Doctor Juan Bruno Zayas if this city.
She said that such births are part of the 12.420 that occurred in the province at that stage, 1.118 less than in 2015 and with infant mortality of 4.4 per thousand live births, the third lowest in the history of the territory and surpassed by the rates of 3.8 and 4.2, obtained in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
Likewise, lowered the birth weight index with 67 children born with this condition and school-age mortality was reduced, which is a priority along with a strong preventive work that begins with the family, to avoid accidents, the cause of more than 50 percent of such deplorable losses, she said.
By 2017, she said, they will work for a better quality of prenatal care and childcare in children from zero to 18 months, and to encourage professional advancement, in addition to intersectoral work for the timely entry of pregnant women to any risk and assistance to children less than one year.
Although the province has a greater number of people interested in planning maternity or paternity, it was stressed the importance of timely detection of preconceptional reproductive risk, which is a guarantee to build a project of personal and family life in a responsible manner, and with health.