Relaxed birth policy heightens reproductive health challenges

BEIJING - China's relaxed one-child policy will lead to challenges in the country's reproductive, maternal, and neonatal health care due to advanced maternal age, a top health offical said.

Wang Guoqiang, deputy head of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, made the remarks at a conference on maternal and child health on Thursday.

Wang said that since many women will give birth to their second child at an advanced maternal age, there will be greater odds for maternal complications and birth defects.

Therefore it is essential for the nation's health facilities to boost capacity in providing obstetrics and mid-wife services, treating mothers and their newborns in critical condition, and in pre-natal care and birth defect screening.

It is estimated that 2 million more infants will be born each year as a result of the relaxed family planning policy, and 80 percent of them will be born in cities.

China plans to invest 10.7 billion yuan (1.72 bln U.S. dollars) to build over 1,100 maternal and child health facilities during the 12th five-year program (2011-2015).

China's family planning policy was first introduced in the late 1970s to rein in the surging population by limiting most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two children, if the first born was a girl.

In November last year, however, the Communist Party of China decided that China will loosen its decades-long one-child policy, allowing couples to have two children if one of the parents is an only child.

Previously, urban couples could only have two children if both the father and mother were only children.