Editors’ highlights

The European Perinatal Health Report from the EURO PERISTAT project was released in December 2008, showing for the first time comparable data on maternal and infant health across Europe. It is the most comprehensive report on the subject to date and takes a new approach to health reporting. Instead of comparing single indicators like infant mortality in European countries, it paints a fuller picture by presenting data about mortality, low-birth-weight and preterm birth alongside data about health care and other factors that affect the outcome of pregnancy. The 280-page report, the result of remarkable collaboration between researchers and official statisticians, contains data on EURO-PERISTAT indicators for the year 2004 from 25 participating EU member states and Norway. It also contains data from three other projects: Surveillance of Cerebral Palsy in Europe (SCPE), European Surveillance of Congenital Anomalies (EUROCAT), and the European Information System to Monitor Short and Long-term Morbidity to Improve Quality of Care and Patient Safety for Very-Low-Birth-Weight Infants (EURONEOSTAT). The project, which began in 1999, and this publication are greatly to the credit of Jennifer Zeitlin as Scientific Coordinator and Meg Zimbeck as Project Coordinator. This is a big step forward to a European understanding in this important field of perinatal medicine. The publication can be downloaded for free in a PDF version at http://www.europeristat.com/.