Fall in number of pregnant women who smoke

A total of 910 deliveries, resulting in 924 births, were registered in Malta between January and March, according to the first quarterly report of the National Obstetric Information System.

The report, compiled by Dr Lina Janulova, analyses the national deliveries and births that occurred in this period, and compares them with the same period last year.

The greatest number of deliveries (40 per cent) occurred in the 25 to 29 age group; the minimum age of the mothers was 14, while the maximum was 44 and the most common age of delivery was 26. According to the statistics, 13 per cent of deliveries (123) occurred to unmarried mothers.

Five per cent of mothers (49) smoked one to three cigarettes a day or more during pregnancy, a drop of two per cent compared with the same quarter in 2001.

The number of live births in the first quarters of 2002 and 2001 were 921 and 959 respectively, accounting for 99 per cent of the total birth rate at a national level.

The report also shows an 18 per cent decline in the number of infants who were breast-fed within 30 minutes of birth over the first quarter of last year.

A total of 897 (99 per cent) of deliveries were singletons, while 12 births were twins and one was a set of triplets. Compared with last year's figures, the rate of singleton deliveries increased by one per cent, while that of twins remained almost the same.

The male and female distribution of births in the first quarter of 2002 was 473 and 451 respectively.

According to a recent study, published in the British Medical Journal, couples living in southern Europe have more male children than those in the north, but the latitude link is reversed in the North American continent, where more boys are born in Canada and the US than in Mexico.

Consultant paediatrician Victor Grech, former head of paediatrics Paul Vassallo Agius and obstetrician Charles Savona-Ventura from St Luke's Hospital obtained 50 years of birth data from the World Health Organisation for analysis.

The data comprised some 550 million births. However, it was not possible to account for these statistically highly significant findings.

A temperature-related effect is unlikely due to the opposite trends in the two continents. Moreover, research showed that the ratio of male to female births over the past 50 years has been decreasing worldwide possibly because male embryos may be more susceptible to environmental toxins.

Dr Grech said the data was currently being analysed to look for trends which may corroborate this theory.