[Present means to prevent premature birth]

Although overall statistics do not show marked decrease in the percentage of infants with a birth weight under 2,500 g, therapeutical advances of the past few years would allow to conduct an action to prevent prematurity. Namely: beta-stimulating agents can control threatened premature delivery, provided the mothers-to-be, and this is essential, get alarmed without delay and seek prompt advice of their physician, screening and treatment of cervicovaginal infections during pregnancy can undoubtedly be efficient, provided the future mothers are regularly visited from the begining of their pregnancy. But such a prophylaxis necessarily requires, at the various stages of its practice, intelligent cooperation of the pregnant women themselves. Such a cooperation could perhaps be obtained through obstetrical psychoprophylactic interviews as a complement to antenatal consultations, the number of which is too small and the time spent on them too short within the organizational frame of community medicine.