A team of researchers from Inserm, an institute that has been counting infant deaths for twenty years, has noted an increase in figures between 2012 and 2019. A first for decades in France.
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A “worrying trend”, notes the team of researchers. Between 2012 and 2019, out of a thousand births, France went from 3.3 deaths to 3.5 deaths of infants under the age of one. An increase which still represents 7% more deaths overall. Compared to Sweden or Finland, France thus observes a “excess” of 1200 deaths among children under one year old. For the Inserm researchers, authors of this study, this phenomenon is worrying. Indeed, the mortality rate is a key indicator for assessing the health of a population.
The researchers want to understand the reason for this increase: were these children premature? Or sick? Was there a support issue? If Professor Jean-Christophe Rozé, co-author of the study, cannot “explain clearly” the reason for this “excess”it indicates that there is “a lot of data already existing and recorded on databases” : “There is a problem of temporality of access and interconnections of this data. For example, we could very simply organize an analysis of all the deaths”, he adds. “As for maternal mortality: it had been the subject of a national committee which had reviewed all the maternal deaths linked to pregnancy.”
“It was extremely effective because it allowed us to reduce maternal mortality. But we don’t have the equivalent for children.”
Professor Jean-Christophe Rozéat franceinfo
The researchers are therefore asking the Ministry of Health for tools to be able to cross-reference all the information and thus understand this increase in infant deaths.