Vigilancia epidemiologica de las malformaciones congenitas en maternidades de la ciudad de cali, colombia.

The congenital malformations embrace a wide variety of pathologies that affects 2-3% of all the newborns, percentage that increases to 7% to the first year of life. If one keeps in mind that 20% of the deaths happened in the first year of life is due to congenital malformations, and that when these do not cause death then the survivors require, to short, medium and long term, a multitude of specialists for diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation, you confirms that we are in front of a problem of public health of first order. With the objective of obtaining reliable data of prevalence and to analyze etiological factors associated to congenital malformations, it is proposed to carry out an investigation that implies the application of the methodology of the Collaborative Study of Congenital Malformations (ECLAMC) for the gathering of data of all the children, alive or dead, that are born with congenital malformations in the maternities, and for the gathering of data of controls for the alive malformed newborns. The appropriate application of the ECLAMC program allows the detection of all the newborns with congenital malformations in the maternities and, being a cases and controls study, it offers the necessary information to carry out analysis of associate etiological factors and makes possible the detection of local buds or epidemics of specific congenital malformations. also, it implies the weekly meeting of physicians of different specialties (gynecologists, pediatricians, pathologists, geneticists) and general physicians to discuss the cases, to arrive to a clinical diagnosis, to suggest the necessary behaviors for the handling of the patients and to make genetic counseling to their families. These academic meetings also allow the training of undergraduates of the Career of Medicine of the Javeriana University - Sectional Cali.