TOO?MANY?WOMEN are placing themselves and their unborn children at serious risk, reporting to clinic very late into their pregnancies.
Senior Medical Officer of Health (South) in the Ministry of Health, Dr Elizabeth Ferdinand, told this to the SATURDAY SUN yesterday during the 6th Annual Perinatal Data Review at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH).
Ferdinand said she was concerned that while women were advised to report to antenatal [before birth] clinic within the first 12 weeks of their pregnancies, only 30 per cent heeded the advice.
Health officials at public clinics had observed that the remaining 70 per cent “are coming when they are four or five months pregnant”.
Ferdinand stressed: “It is very important that women come to clinic early because the quicker we find out if there is something wrong, the better we will be able to deal with it and the better we will be able to make sure that the baby is developing properly.”
“If they don’t come early to clinic, what could happen is that the baby might not develop properly and they themselves might find that their blood has gotten thin and they will become anaemic,” Ferdinand said.
The medical health officer, who oversees the polyclinics, said she was also concerned that an increasing number of new mothers were not returning to clinics for postnatal care [health checks after the baby was born].
“They will bring the babies for check-ups, yes, but they don’t come and present themselves to have care. It is important to make sure that the womb has gone back into place and that their blood has gone back up to the level that it should be.”
Ferdinand revealed that “quite a few” pregnant women admitted to nurses that “they drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes and take a little mariguana now and again” – three substances that pregnant women should not consume. (AH)
