Question 14584 — health

Summary

Ms. Soumya Bourouaha alerts the Minister of Health, Families, Autonomy and People with Disabilities to the downgrading of France in terms of infant mortality due to a lack of resources in hospitals and the remoteness of maternity wards. France now occupies, according to an INED report, 23rd place out of the 27 countries of the European Union in terms of infant mortality. However, France was among the countries best ranked in the 1990s. While the trend remains downward for European countries, France is facing an increase in infant mortality, a phenomenon which directly questions the effectiveness of our healthcare system. Today, the infant mortality rate in France stands at 4.1 deaths per 1000 live births, which represents 2,800 lives per year. Furthermore, half of the deaths occur the first week of life according to a recent survey by Anthony Cortes and Sébastien Leurquin. This situation seems intrinsically linked to the lack of constant resources from which our public hospitals suffer. Furthermore, the Court of Auditors points to insufficient safety and quality of care, poor prevention and too limited parental support. At the same time, the increasing distance from maternity wards constitutes a real risk for many women. The closure of local facilities is forcing more and more future mothers to have to travel for long periods of time, increasing the risk of complications during childbirth. Between 2000 and 2017, the proportion of women of childbearing age living more than 30 minutes from a maternity ward increased by a third to reach 7%. The share of those living more than 45 minutes from a maternity ward increased by 40% and is between 1% and 2 %. Therefore, the closure of small maternity wards has led to a perinatal medical desertification which weakens the safety of care and accentuates territorial health inequalities. Today, overseas and four departments of mainland France, including Lot, Indre-et-Loire, Jura and Seine-Saint-Denis, are particularly affected by infant mortality. For example, in Lot, in fifteen years, three of the four maternity centers have closed, leading to a worrying distance of women from maternity establishments. Still in this department, the proportion of women residing more than 30 minutes from a maternity hospital has quadrupled over this period, going from 6% to 24% today, becoming at the same time the department in mainland France with the highest infant mortality rate (6.2 deaths per 1,000 births). The case of the little one Leo, born very prematurely at 26 weeks, weighing 680 grams, illustrates these difficulties. While science shows that the presence of his parents 24 hours a day is essential for his development, they cannot stay with him at night. They travel 150 km a day to find their son, despite the costs linked to travel, caring for his big sister, their obligations and underlying exhaustion. He is not It is conceivable that this child has less chance of growing well because he does not live near a hospital with a suitable medical facility. Every year, 50,000 premature babies experience this reality, or 140 babies per day. If today they are the smallest and most fragile, they are also the adults of tomorrow. Under these conditions, she wishes to know the measures that the Government intends to take to strengthen the resources of pediatric and neonatology hospital services, to guarantee the maintenance and security of local maternity wards and restore France's position in the fight against infant mortality.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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