The Mother and Child Foundation

At normal birthweights, the rate of severe developmental brain damage is 1 to 2 per 1,000 live births.

• At birthweights below 1.5Kg, the rate rises to over 200/1000.
• The cost to the nation is put at £4 billion by the Little Foundation.
  
• The European Cerebral Palsy Study of the Little Foundation and the Castang Trust, has established from Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the brain damage that it occurs around or before 40 weeks gestation.
• The consequences of low birthweight, brain damage, and mental impairement has become global.

However, cerebral palsy is a tip of an iceberg. In the UK 54,000 children are born at low birthweights (<2.5 Kg or 5 Lbs). A high proportion of these, especially of the very preterm infants, will not achieve their full potential for school learning, or health. Some will have behavioural defects because of disturbances in brain development prenatally. Despite the advances in medicine and science, the prevalence of cerebral palsy amongst low birthweight infants, increased three-fold from 1967 to the early 1990s. Government programmes in the Thames Valley Gateway to London need to address the health and nutrition of the mother if they are to succeed.

The work sponsored by the Foundation has produced a good biochemical explanation for the brain damage and chronic ill health. There are modifiable nutritional factors of special relevance to the brain that offer a hope of being able to help protect and treat such damage in the early stages.