“While temperatures are rising in sub-Saharan Africa, knowledge of how they affect pregnant women and their babies is scant,” says the study’s corresponding author Claudia Hanson, docent at the Department of Global Public Health, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. “Our results indicate that mother and newborn care in this region must be improved to ensure that hard-won improvements in reducing mortality are not lost to climate change,” adds Andrea Pembe, professor at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Tanzania. The study included over 138,000 births at 16 hospitals in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Benin, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda. The researchers analysed the association between high temperatures in the week before birth and perinatal mortality, which is to say a death just before, during, or within 24 hours after birth. High temperatures were defined as an increase in average weekly temperature for a typically warm week (between 22 and 28 °C depending on country, corresponding to the 75th percentile) to an exceptionally warm week (between 24 and 29 °C, corresponding to the 99th percentile).
Stillbirth is defined as the death of a baby after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The study found that the risk of stillbirth was significantly higher in women who had experienced a previous stillbirth. This finding suggests that a history of stillbirth may be a risk factor for future stillbirths.
