Dr. Ruth C. Fretts discusses the importance of learning more about stillbirths on the Boston Globe online.
Q. You write in your paper that one in every 200 births is a stillbirth — a fetus older than 20 weeks who does not survive delivery. That seems amazingly high.
A. People are surprised to find out it’s more common than death due to HIV [the virus that causes AIDS] and 10 times more common than SIDS [sudden infant death syndrome]. There’s this big black hole of grief, yet there hasn’t been a significant effort to try to address the problem, until now.
Q. Why is it important to raise awareness about the prevalence of stillbirth?
A. It empowers women if you know what are the signs and symptoms or what are the risk factors. Without having awareness, you’re not going to have the government or people who have resources allocate money to study the prevention of stillbirth.