During the year 2022, the Maternal and Infant Care Program (PAMI) focused its efforts on improving strategies to guarantee the wellbeing of children, pregnant women and postpartum women in Ciego de Ávila.

The avilanian province maintained a mortality rate of 6.2 in spite of the new measures incorporated in the different services, such as the neonatology service at the Antonio Luaces Iraola provincial teaching hospital, where Ladisbel Rodríguez Placeres said that they decided to keep the least possible intervention on the newborn, avoiding tube feeding and instead introduce small drops of milk through syringes.

The objective of this practice is to bring them to exclusive breastfeeding as quickly as possible, maintaining kangaroo feeding for its effectiveness.

The main causes of infant mortality in children under one year of age, according to Causa Palma, national head of PAMI, were perinatal conditions, mainly related to low birth weight, prematurity and intrauterine growth retardation, in addition to congenital malformations and sepsis.

Dr. Noemí Causa Palma, national head of PAMI, said that among the actions taken were new measures to reduce prematurity and intrauterine growth retardation, an integral evaluation of the operation of maternity homes was carried out to increase the occupational index, teaching and professional development activities were carried out and the quality of care processes in the Neonatology, Pediatrics, Gynecobstetrics and Pediatric Intensive Care Services was strengthened.

Despite the efforts of the healthcare personnel, PAMI did not achieve the desired results. At the end of the year, the Directorate of Medical Records and Statistics of MINSAP reports, as preliminary data, that 95,402 live births were reported on the Island, 3,694 less than the previous year, and the nation recorded an infant mortality rate of 7.5 per 1,000 live births, with 39 deaths less than in 2021, when a rate of 7.6 was reported.