Motherhood and Childhood Protection

The Belarusian healthcare system excels at providing medical aid to mothers and children, at developing and introducing sophisticated technologies. The Republic of Belarus is ranked 25^th on the ranking that evaluates comfortable maternity conditions in various countries and is a top 50 country in terms of prenatal care and birth organization. The Belarusian experience of creating the prenatal care service has been borrowed by the Russian Federation and other CIS states.

Infant mortality in the Republic of Belarus makes up 2.5 per 1,000 liveborn infants (it is 3.69 in Europe and 9.34 in the CIS states).

Belarusian medics have nursed babies weighing 500g or more since 1994. The survival rate of children with an extremely low body weight in the first year of their lives exceeds 80%. It is worth noting that over 80% of these kids demonstrate no signs of disabilities.

The Republic of Belarus boasts one of the lowest child mortality figures for children under 5 – 3.5-4 deaths per 1,000 children. Belarus is ranked 4^th on the global scale and shares the position with Austria, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal, Montenegro, and Switzerland.

In 2018 the national applied science center for pediatric surgery became the first CIS institution to perform a Damus-Rastelli surgery on a three-month-old child. It is an extremely complicated intervention designed to correct inborn hypoplasia of the left heart. In 2019 pediatric surgeons carried out a unique surgery on the heart of an 11-year-old boy – the Belarusian medics were the first ones in the CIS to fix a defect of the interatrial septum while using intracardial ultrasonography for control. In March 2019 a team of Belarusian pediatric cardiosurgeons operated on a baby with the body weight of 1,135g to correct an inborn heart defect: pulmonary valve artery stenosis. It was a unique event in the history of pediatric cardiosurgery.