Investigating the effects of financial crisis on pregnancy

Introduction: The global economic crisis has affected many European countries and especially Greece, with main feature that in a short time period it has affected rapidly Greeks’ life and especially the field of health. As far as pregnancy is concerned the consequences have manifested with disorder of different perinatal parameters and they concerned equally both mother and fetus. The purpose of this study is the investigation of consequences of financial crisis in pregnancy, the outcome of pregnancies and childbirth, in relationship to the birth weight of neonates and prematurity. Methods: This is a retrospective study, which covered periods before, during and after the crisis (2006, 2011 and 2019) and was carried out in a public General Hospital of Thessaloniki. The data were collected from the birth registers of the delivery room and for their processing were used the x2 test, the t-test, the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U-test, the anova test and the Spearman coefficient. Results: The present study showed an increase in the rate of caesareans sections from 35% (2006) to 53.5% (2019) (p = 0.04) and statistically significant differences between native and non-native women, with foreigners showing more favorable rates of prematurity ( p = 0.03), cesarean section (p = 0.05) and lower maternity age (p = 0.00). Finally, it was found that women who gave birth prematurely (p = 0.04) or by caesarean section (p= 0.02), were older. Conclusions: Immediate need for interventions was deemed necessary in the maternal care and special mention for the mitigation of factors which are affected by the socioeconomic fluctuations (mother’s age, percentage of caesareans sections, prematurity, birth weight of neonates) and constitute insurmountable elements which required to be set in the centre of interest of the Public Health bodies.