More women becoming moms in their 30s

Senior Medical Officer at Victoria Jubilee Hospital (VJH) Dr Garth McDonald says that while Jamaica still has a declining birth rate, more women over 35 are having children.

"The teenage rate remains almost the same with about 12-14 per cent. If you check the data, you will see the 35 and over age group expanding a bit. Persons are now delaying fertility with the whole ascension of women wanting to get the education and setting themselves in the right way before they actually have children," he said.

VJH, one of the largest maternity hospitals in the English speaking Caribbean, delivers approximately 6,000 babies annually. McDonald also said staff have been seeing an extension of 'crop season' - the months in which Jamaica sees spikes in pregnancies.

"We are more now seeing an extension of the season where it is not as predictable as before. From July back to January, February and we are seeing a heightening in September to around January. It would be about nine months from the festive season such as Christmas, Valentine's Day and Carnival," he said.

"We are also seeing a higher set of premature babies coming in from about June to October. The prematurity is multifactorial and some may be due to lifestyle changes, infections such as UTIs and some of the vaginal infections can lead to that. We see those same set of babies just before the crop season and we always see the prematurity rate of premature babies being around fifteen percent and that trend continues," McDonald added.

He was speaking to THE STAR on Wednesday at the donation of a new ultrasound machine to the hospital by the Keith Tang Foundation. McDonald said the machine will be extremely significant to the labour ward.

"We had a machine before but that went down little over a year now and about the same time Keith Tang Foundation reached out to us. We have other machines in the institution but this machine will be placed on the labour ward so we are allowed easy access. We won't have to move the patient or walk the patient downstairs as the machine will be right there," McDonald said.

Tang was a former CEO of the hospital. Tang joined the staff after graduating from the University College of the West Indies in 1955. He later had the honour of being the first graduate of the institution to attain membership at the prestigious Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in England in 1961. As a surgeon, he was adept and skilful, earning the awe and envy of his colleagues. He popularised the Pfannensteil (bikini cut) in Jamaica, replacing less cosmetically appealing midline incisions for women.