Prevalence of Abortion and Neonatal Death and Its Relation to Congenital TORCH Infections in the Departments of Gynaecology and Obstetrics and Neonates of Benghazi Medical Centre from 2014 to 2018

Background: TORCH infection is responsible for the major of maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality in the pregnancy because of their ability to generate congenital defects. It transmits to foetus from the mother during gestation or delivery time and leads to serious complication to the foetus. It can lead to abortion, congenital anomalies and intrauterine fetal death. In fact, the most effective way to prevent the infection is a regular hand washing, particularly when caring for infected women and babies. The aim of this study is to assess the relationship between the rate of abortion and foetus death and TORCH infection as a major cause.

Methods: The data was collected from neonatal death certificates from the departments of gynaecology, obstetrics and neonates at Benghazi Medical Centre, which includes age groups, and causes of death, the data included all certificates from October 2014 to December 2018.

Results: The current study had showed that there was a significant elevation in the fetal and infant mortality rates from 2014 to 2018, and these numbers were increasing throughout the years without any medical reasons. High foetus death was observed at gestational period 33 -40 weeks, while the neonatal death was higher at age 1 to 30 days. Furthermore, this study reported that head and brain congenital anomalies were the most common between foetus and neonates and these findings were assumed that the death of the foetus and neonate could be caused by any of TORCH infections when compared to the previous studies.

Conclusion: Elevation rates of neonates and foetus were an obvious issue that must be of major concern, so that, the findings of this study emphasizing on the demand for doing TORCH test for all pregnant women at the first of pregnancy to early recognizing the infection. In addition, it is ensuring the demands of doing the TORCH test with the required HIV and hepatitis C tests before delivery to guide the staff take further attention. In addition, it emphasizes the need to focus on the effectiveness of hand hygiene, cleaning and disinfection in the department to reduce the rate of infection.