How a mother’s stress can decide when her baby arrives
Dr Salimah Walani
AKU
Media Source: The Express Tribune (Pakistan)
Date: 7 November 2025
According to Professor and Sally Smith Chair in Nursing at Queen's University in Canada, Dr Shahirose Sadrudin Premji, research shows that when a pregnant woman's emotional well-being suffers, it increases the likelihood of pre-term births. She said that as of 2020, Pakistan had a rate of preterm births between 15.8% to 21.6%…
According to Professor and Sally Smith Chair in Nursing at Queen's University in Canada, Dr Shahirose Sadrudin Premji, research shows that when a pregnant woman's emotional well-being suffers, it increases the likelihood of pre-term births. She said that as of 2020, Pakistan had a rate of preterm births between 15.8% to 21.6%, with just over 61 infant deaths per 1000 on average, and 154 maternal deaths per 100'000 live births (over a period of 42 days). The findings were presented at a seminar at AKU on Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy: Impact on Generations to Come which detailed the results of seven years of work on a project on maternal mental health. Out of 190 million pregnancies in low and middle-income countries each year, 63 million women face mental health concerns during pregnancy. Dean of the School of Midwifery and Nursing (SONAM) at Aga Khan University (AKU), Dr Salimah Walani, opened the session noting, "Most research [on maternal health] is on how to save babies," but we don't know enough about how a mother's mental health affects her unborn child.