The paper said the number of births dropped by 10,000 in the past 15 years, yet the proportion of premature births remained unchanged. On top of that, a positive trend of infant mortality in recent years was reversed in 2013.

The main reason for infant mortality is premature birth and low birth weight. The majority of children with permanent damage including blindness, hearing loss or learning disability were born prematurely.

The university research group headed by Péter Balázs revealed in the study that among mothers who stated their ethnicity as Roma the proportion of premature birth was as high as 10.7% as against 7.9% among non-Roma mothers. A total of 14.2% of Roma babies were born with a weight of less than 2,500 grams as against 7.6% of non-Roma babies.

Hungary has the highest number of premature births in the European Union at around 8,000 annually, including nearly 1,500 newborns with critically low weight.

Source www.hungarymatters.hu

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