Europe 1 with AFP 3:58 p.m., March 04, 2023

This Saturday, several learned societies and an association of users called on the government to reform the perinatal care system.

According to the doctors, without it, the system goes "to the shipwreck".

This finding is based in particular on the worrying rise in infant mortality over the past decade.

Without reform of the perinatal care system, it is going "to shipwreck", alert in concert, the French Society of Perinatal Medicine (SFMP), several learned societies and an association of users who are appealing to the government on Saturday.

“It is imperative to rethink and reorganize our perinatal care system, because today all the indicators are red,” alarmed the SFMP in a column published by Le Monde.

A worrying rise in infant mortality

The report shared by learned medical societies and organizations of gynecologists-obstetricians, neonatologists or even anesthesiologists-resuscitators, but also an association of users, co-signer of the text, is based particularly on the worrying increase in infant mortality during the last decade which places the country in 25th place in Europe when in 2012, France was in 2nd position.

"When we know the situation of maternity wards, how can we not make the link between these alarming indicators and the deterioration of working conditions?"

ask these doctors and users.

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A redesigned system "in a global, realistic and coherent way"

A few days after the publication in the press of the conclusions of a report presented to the Academy of Medicine which proposes to reduce the number of maternity wards in France by 20%, the authors of the forum call on the public authorities to put an end to their " inertia" and ask that the perinatal care system be redesigned "in a global, realistic and coherent way".

"The technical platforms must be grouped together in better equipped and computerized maternity wards which accommodate several levels of care and offer working conditions allowing patients and their children to be supported in complete safety and in good treatment", judge the co-signatories.

This "regrouping of technical platforms" which will result in maternity closures "must be accompanied by the multiplication of local perinatal centers (CPP)", they add.

The SFMP, the other signatory learned medical societies and the SOS Prema user association are calling for the meeting of national perinatal conferences.

Aware of the politically sensitive nature of maternity closures, they call for "awareness of the issues by the population" which alone "can make it possible to avoid disaster".