News & Events in Belarus
Lukashenko: Right to life is the most important human right
Aleksandr Lukashenko, 2021
The stories have made history. In 2018, Belarusian cardiac surgeons performed a Damus-Rastelli surgery for the first time in the CIS. The patient was a three-month-old baby with hypoplastic syndrome of the left side of the heart. The surgery lasted for 14 hours. The baby's heart was stopped for three hours. A year later, Belarusian doctors corrected a congenital heart defect: pulmonary valve stenosis in an infant weighing just over a kilogram. This case was the first of its kind in the world pediatric cardiac surgery. At the end of 2021, Belarusian surgeons performed a unique intrauterine operation. At 25-26 weeks, the fetus was diagnosed with an open spinal hernia, and it was impossible to do without the help of neurosurgeons.
The protection of motherhood and childhood has long been the hallmark of the Belarusian healthcare system. It's hard to imagine but doctors nurse babies weighing 500gr back to health. Moreover, the survival rate of babies with extremely low body weight is almost 80%. This is one of the highest rates in Europe. In the new episode of BelTA's Yputube project “After the Fact; Lukashenko 's Decisions” we will tell you how the situation with the infant and child mortality was reversed in Belarus. Why the president strongly supports IVF and what Aleksandr Lukashenko calls true democracy and the most important human right. We will also look into the IVF genetic bank and find out why Belarusians cryopreserve their embryos?
How does the motherhood and childhood protection system look like in Belarus?
For more than 20 years, Belarus has been operating a multi-tier system of maternal and child healthcare. The first tier is central district hospitals. Such hospitals receive pregnant women with no medical conditions. The second tier is inter-district and city clinics that operate small intensive care units for newborns. The third tier is regional hospitals that treat women with very serious pathologies and nurse babies back to health. The fourth, the highest technological tier of perinatal care is the Mother and Child National Research and Treatment Center.
It was established in November 2004 at the National Clinical Hospital, the Research Institute for the Protection of Motherhood and Childhood and the Research Institute for Hereditary and Congenital Diseases. In other words, the Mother and Child National Research and Treatment Centerinherited the best practices of several generations of talented doctors and scientists. The center was reconstructed and equipped within the framework of the state investment program.
When visiting the center in 2006, Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed that it should have the most advanced equipment and technologies. "This may be more expensive, but still. As they say the miser pays twice," the head of state said.
The emphasis on prenatal diagnosis had already yielded results. According to the president, thanks to the intensive work, Belarus has caught up with the world's leading countries in terms of child mortality.
What is infant mortality rate in Belarus?
Time passes, and technology does not stand still. Two years ago, a new building of the clinical department of anesthesiology, resuscitation and intensive care of newborns was put into operation at Mother and Child. This is top-notch technology. Why? How else can you nurse a baby born prematurely and weighing half a kilogram? But technology isn't everything. You can't do it without caring hands and kind smiles of doctors.
"Our department treats about 900 little patients every year. Today, it is truly a world-class top-grade facility. We take care of the country's most difficult pregnancies and, accordingly, babies with the most severe health problems. Therefore, the services of the department are in high demand. Sometimes we don't discharge babies for quite a long time - for a month or more. All this time, they are separated from their parents because they are on artificial life support. Therefore, they receive affection, love, and care from the medical staff," said Oksana Svirskaya, Head of the Clinical Department of Anesthesiology, Resuscitation and Intensive Care of Newborns at the Mother and Child National Research and Treatment Center.
Belarus is among the countries with the lowest infant mortality rate. It is ahead of not only its CIS partners and European neighbors, but also many developed countries, including the USA, the UK, and Denmark. In the 1990s the country's infant mortality rate was 12-13 per 1,000 live births, while in recent years it has dropped 5-6 times. The situation is the same with the under-5 mortality rate. Healthcare Minister Dmitry Pinevich once said: if a baby dies, it makes no difference for a family what morality rate the country has, for them it will be 100%. Therefore, doctors fight for every life.
Maternal mortality in Belarus is also one of the lowest in the world. International missions have repeatedly praised the approaches of Belarusian specialists and recommended them for implementation in other countries.
“Today Belarusians doctors can handle the most sophisticated surgeries, including those that are considered the pinnacle of surgery – organ transplants. 300 people got a new heart. 600 lives were saved due to kidney transplants. Actually, kidney transplant surgeries are performed routinely in Belarus now. It is hard to believe, but over 30 women gave birth to little Belarusians after undergoing such surgeries. Last month our surgeons worked a miracle, so to say – they operated a prematurely-born baby six days after the birth. A baby weighing slightly more than a kilo received a heart surgery. Nothing like that has ever been done anywhere in the world before, because to have such a surgery, a baby should weigh at least 2.5-3 kilos. Another example: not so long ago a woman who had been in coma for two months after an accident gave birth to a healthy baby. The doctors saved both the mother and the baby. Such cases make history,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said in 2019.
Who can apply for a free IVF cycle in Belarus?
The objectives of Belarus' demographic policy remain unchanged: to stabilize population numbers and create conditions for population growth. Here it is necessary to mention another topic - in vitro fertilization. IVF has long become a routine way to treat infertility. On 10 November 1977, a miracle happened in a small laboratory in England: an egg fertilized in a Petri dish was successfully transplanted into a woman's uterus. 38 weeks later, Louise Joy Brown was born - the first ‘test tube baby', as children conceived in this way were later called.
In Belarus, reproductive technologies were introduced in 1994. Since that time, about 10,000 Belarusians were born thanks to IVF. Years later, the government offered subsidized loans to married couples to pay for IVF. In line with a presidential decree signed in 2021, every Belarusian family with an infertility diagnosis is entitled to one IVF cycle free of charge.
About 4,000 married couples took advantage of this program; 900 women became mothers, another 500 got pregnant. Such programs are also available in other countries. The world leader here is Denmark where about 10% of all children are born thanks to reproductive technologies. True, these impressive figures probably hide other demographic problems, but we won't talk about them today. Anyway, IVF is a chance to get pregnant and give birth to a healthy baby in a seemingly hopeless situation.
“It is believed that if a couple cannot conceive a baby within a year, this is considered a medical condition that should be treated. At first, fertility tests are performed to identify possible reasons for the failure to get pregnant. Treatment is proscribed depending on the reasons. Conservative treatment does not help in around 30% of cases. These couples are recommended to undertake IVF. This year, our department has already fulfilled the plan, and has conducted more than a thousand IVF cycles for married couples free of charge. I see the results of my work and I see the children who were born thanks to assisted reproductive technologies. These children are definitely happier as they were long-awaited. The families where they were born pay great attention to the upbringing of these children, their health and their future,” Irina Dus, Head of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Department of the Mother and Child National Research and Treatment Center, said.
Among the first participants in the state IVF program were Svetlana and Aleksandr Adamovich from the village of Ivenets in Minsk Oblast. They had hoped to hear children's laughter in their home for a long time. But they had to wait for it for long 10 years...
“We met in 2012. We got married. After trying to conceive for half a year we decided to seek help. The treatment did not yield any results. We switched to another medical center, and after a while we were recommended IVF. The first attempt failed. We got upset but gave it a second try. It didn't work either. We finally got desperate and started thinking about adoption,” Svetlana recalled.
“In 2020 we learned about the state IVF program which envisaged one cycle free of charge. We were the first to apply to the regional maternity hospital. We seized this chance. We are parents now,” Aleksandr added.
When the pregnancy test arrived positive, Svetlana decided to deliver the news in some unusual way. She put it into a plush stork and brought it to Aleksandr.
“I was confused at first. I asked Sveta what was going on. And then I saw a positive pregnancy test inside. I knew at once that everything was going to be fine,” the spouses recall the story with a smile.
Why did Lukashenko instructed to set up a genetic database in Belarus?
Of course, IVF will not solve all demographic problems in the country. Everything possible should be done for a woman to be able to give birth, Aleksandr Lukashenko said. That was why he gave the instruction to develop an IVF bank in the country.
“We have recently discussed this problem. They say that the system is incomplete, that we don't have a database, that these things are underdeveloped in our country. Let us focus on this. Let us catch up with Russia, to begin with. This is what women told me just two or three days ago. They told me that we were far behind. Let us do it and do it very quickly - in the first half of next year. We will take all the decisions to ensure we have it similar to those in the most developed countries. If we have agreed that IVF is important (it does not matter whether 800 or just two people apply for it), let us resolve this issue. Let us do everything possible so that a woman can give birth,” the head of state said as he visited the Mother and Child center on 31 December 2021.
All couples, like the heroes of our episode, can cryopreserve their remaining embryos after the IVF program. The Mother and Child center has them from every third couple who took part in the state IVF program. Doctors call it a safety net.
“We store embryos, eggs and sperm for fertility treatment in Dewar vessels. Embryos are mostly from couples who have been treated before, who have produced good and excellent quality embryos. We store them. They can be stored for a long time – for years. We also have donor eggs and donor sperm. If a couple seeks treatment with the use of donor biological material, we can offer it,” irina Dus explained.
Instead of an epilogue
One more interesting fact. European journalists once asked Aleksandr Lukashenko about human rights in Belarus. The most important human right is the right to life, the president said then. If we take a look at the matter from this angle, Europe is still far behind Belarus.
Later, the head of state developed his idea at the UN Summit on Sustainable Development in New York. “During the years of sovereign existence Belarus met the millennium development goals related to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving 100% adult literacy, promoting gender equality, social and political stability, and preventing ethnic and religious discrimination. We have zero maternal mortality. The infant mortality is the lowest in the world. The democracy is about these things rather than the ideas that our Western teachers are trying to impose on us.”
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