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On 21 May 2018, after the completion of this study, the FDA High Care for filing all the congenital abnormality report
issued a warning that women treated with dolutegravir in forms and permitting access to them, and Ms. T Mulder,
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the first trimester of pregnancy are at higher risk for NTDs. Faculty of Health Sciences, UFS, for reviewing the document
This report also indicated that the National Institutes of and editing it for publication.
Health has launched an international study to compare the
safety and efficacy of three ARV treatments for pregnant This research was conducted for the fulfilment of the MMed
women with HIV. in Paediatrics (NT) and supervised by BDH.

A recent study highlights the need for proper data surveillance Competing interests
and recording of congenital disorders to accurately
demonstrate the contribution thereof to the burden of disease The authors have declared that no competing interest exists.
on our health care system. The Congenital Disorder
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Surveillance was already implemented in SA in 1980 with Authors’ contributions
several changes to the system in 2001 namely, the Birth Defect
Notification Tool of the National Department of Health, and All authors contributed equally to this work.
a coding classification added in 2006. It was found in the
25
study performed by Lebese et al. that the implementation of Funding information
these systems was poor. When compared to expected The research was funded from the research funds of the
congenital disorder notifications, there was an underreporting
of more than 99%. Kwa-Zulu Natal recorded the highest Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, UFS, and the
number of congenital disorders per year (total of 7219 over 9 Division Clinical Genetics, UFS.
years) whilst the FS only recorded 744 cases during the same
period. This highlights the need for training of healthcare Data availability statement
providers as well as coordinators to report congenital defects Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data
so that relevant health policies can be developed. The poor were created or analysed in this study.
data availability in this study highlighted the same limitations
and issues.
Disclaimer
Conclusion The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of

the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or
There is a clinical impression that the incidence of NTDs is position of any affiliated agency of the authors.
increasing. The data obtained in this study appear to support
this impression, but no significant statistical difference could
be proven. References
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http://www.sajhivmed.org.za 425 Open Access