New Hurdles for Premature Babies Middle-income countries in Asia and Latin America have been doing better at saving premature infants, experts report, but blindness and cerebral palsy are on the rise among the babies saved. Similar trends occurred in the United States and Europe in the 1940s and "50s, and "there is a risk of recreating that epidemic," said Dr. Joy E. Lawn, a neonatologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the leader of a team doing new research on premature births. Six of the team's papers were published on The Reproductive Health Journal's website last month as part of World Prematurity Day. Many hospitals in middle-income countries can now save babies who would once have died, Dr. Lawn said, but lack the ability to monitor them. For example, premature babies given too much oxygen may have abnormal growth of blood vessels in the eye, which can leave them blind. Dr. Lawn said she had been in wards where several babies were receiving oxygen, yet the hospital had no pulse oximeters to monitor their blood-oxygen levels. Jaundiced babies whose bilirubin levels rise too high can develop cerebral palsy. In poor countries, the risk of death for premature babies is 10 times as high as in rich countries. In middle-income countries, the risk of death is only slightly higher than in the West, Dr. Lawn said, "but the risk of severe disability is twice as high." About 15 million babies around the world are born prematurely each year. About two million die soon after birth, and more than 900,000 survivors have some impairment.