Tag: maternal health

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Pregnancy after 50 – extending the Fertility Clock

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pregnancy after 50Healthy postmenopausal women shouldn’t be discouraged from pursuing pregnancy using donor eggs or embryos, one of the world’s largest organizations of reproductive medicine says.

In a shift in its official stance on whether women of “advanced age” should be discouraged from achieving pregnancy, the ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine now says that some women over 50 who are healthy and “well prepared” for child rearing are candidates to receive donated eggs.

The society sees it as a natural extension of what science can do. But not everyone agrees with the idea of artificially extending fertility past 50. The group’s guidelines strongly influence practice in Canada.

While infertility may be a natural consequence of menopause, the committee says that allowing women to conceive through egg donation “is not such a significant departure from other currently accepted fertility treatments as to be considered ethically inappropriate in postmenopausal women.”

The old statement, published in 2004, said that, given the physical and psychological risks involved, “postmenopausal pregnancy should be discouraged.” Read full article.

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Miscarriages Put Women at Risk for Heart Conditions

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A new study scheduled for presentation Tuesday November 6, at the American Heart Association annual meeting in Los Angeles finds that women who have had one or moremiscarriages are at an increased risk for hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis), which can lead to problems such as heart attack and stroke, reported US News Health Today.

Researchers looked at health data from more than 1 million Danish women to examine the association between miscarriage and heart attack, stroke or renovascular hypertension, which is high blood pressure caused by narrowing of the arteries that carry blood to the kidneys. Comparing to women who had no miscarriages, women who had one miscarriage were 11 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack. The risk more than doubled in women who had four or more miscarriages, according to a heart association news release. Read full article.

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New women’s health benefits go into effect

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WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 (UPI) — New U.S. health insurance plans are required beginning Wednesday to provide new preventive benefits at no cost to covered women as part of healthcare reform.

The new rules require insurers to cover a comprehensive set of preventive services that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates will benefit 47 million women. They include contraceptives, breastfeeding supplies and gestational diabetes screening for pregnant women, prenatal care, routine breast and pelvic exams and pap tests used to detect potentially precancerous and cancerous processes in the cervix.

Other benefits that became effective Wednesday as part of a decade-long rollout of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law by President Barack Obama March 23, 2010, include testing for the human papillomavirus — which can cause warts and, in a minority of cases, lead to cervical cancers — screening and counseling for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases and infections, and screening and counseling for domestic and interpersonal violence.

Read full article.

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Low Fat Diet May Ease Hot Flashes

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In addition to its other benefits, a low-fat diet may also reduce menopausal hot flashes and night sweats, new research has found.

Scientists studied 17,473 menopausal women who were not on hormone therapy. Forty percent were assigned to a low-fat dietary plan with increased intake of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. They met periodically with nutritionists to assure compliance. The rest ate their customary diets. All participants recorded night sweats and hot flashes with details about their severity.

Over all, women in the diet group were 14 percent more likely to eliminate these symptoms in the first year than those not on the diet, a difference that persisted after controlling for initial weight, smoking, ethnicity and other factors.

Read full article.

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UK Surgeons Launch Womb Transplant Charity

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A charity has been launched to raise money for research that could allow the first womb transplants in the UK.

Uterine Transplantation UK was set up by a team of British surgeons who say they need £500,000 to finish testing the procedure. Only after tests in animals have been completed will they be able to apply for ethics permission to perform the surgery in patients.

Womb transplantation offers an alternative to surrogacy or adoption for thousands of women who are either born without a womb or have theirs removed due to birthing complications, cancer or other diseases.

A previous attempt at this surgery in 2000 failed because of a problem in the blood supply to the transplanted uterus. However, several improvements to the technique have been made and last August a 21-year old woman in Turkey became the first successful recipient of a womb transplant.

‘We are confident, especially with a transplant abroad being carried out with the same methodology that we have recommended that within two years or so, given enough funding, we can begin helping women in the UK’, said Mr Richard Smith, a consultant gynaecologist from Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and the Lister Hospital.

Read full article.

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Study Says Meeting Contraception Needs Could Sink Maternal Death Rate

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A new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University shows that fulfilling unmet contraception demand by women in developing countries could reduce global maternal mortality by nearly a third, a potentially great improvement for one of the world’s most vulnerable populations.

The study, published on Tuesday in The Lancet, a British science journal, comes ahead of a major family planning conference in London organized by the British government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that is an attempt to refocus attention on the issue. It has faded from the international agenda in recent years, overshadowed by efforts to combat AIDS and other infectious diseases, as well as by ideological battles.

Read full article.

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Gates Foundation to Pledge Funds for Contraception

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(Reuters) – The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is set to unveil funding a sum in the hundreds of millions of dollars for a campaign to improve access to contraception in the developing world.

The exact amount will be announced at a summit of world leaders and aid organizations in London on Wednesday, but in an interview with Reuters, Melinda Gates said the commitment would be “on a par” with the foundation’s other big programs, like that against malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis.

In January, the foundation pledged a further $750 million for that fight on top of $650 million contributed since the fund was set up 10 years ago.

The aim of the London Summit on Family Planning is to raise $4 billion to expand access to contraception for 120 million women in the developing world by 2020.

According to United Nations figures, about 220 million women in the developing world who do not want to get pregnant, cannot get reliable access to contraception.

“Because we didn’t have contraception or family planning on the agenda we weren’t putting new money into it,” says Gates. “We weren’t saying this is a priority. So this is our moment in time to say this is a priority and we need to fund it.”

Read full article.

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8 Things We Learned From Octomom

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Dr. Edward Dourron / For THE CURRENT

A year ago, the Medical Board of California revoked the license of Dr. Michael Kamrava, finding he “did not exercise sound judgment” in transferring 12 embryos to Nadya Suleman, who already had six children at home. The ruling, while not surprising, was illuminating, and it’s worth reflecting on the eight things we learned from Octomom:

1. Know How to Say No: There is a point where physicians have to make a judgment call. Pregnancies with triplets – let alone eight infants – put the mother at high risk of serious medical complications and put unborn children at risk for developmental disabilities. Doctors need to rely on their professional expertise and experience to know when to turn a patient down.

2. Beware the Patient with Tunnel Vision: Often when a patient comes to a fertility doctor, unsuccessful pregnancy attempts have made her anxious and determined. She might want to get pregnant even if she has underlying conditions that could put her or her baby at risk. Doctors have learned to be vigilant about preconception counseling and medical testing to determine whether patients are healthy enough to pursue pregnancy.

3. Less is More: In 1999, 35 percent of all transfers involved four or more embryos. In 2009, only 10 percent had four or more. And those high-number transfers are generally reserved for patients with significant fertility challenges. In contrast, Octomom already underwent multiple successful IVF (in vitro fertilization) procedures and had given birth to six children when she had her 12-embryo transfer.

4. Less is Sometimes Really More: Single embryo transfers are gaining popularity. Why? During IVF, the rate of monozygotic (identical) twinning is 10 times the rate in nature. Though Octomom didn’t experience this, it is not uncommon for a single embryo transfer to result in twins – or a double transfer to become quads.

Read full article.

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Saving Mothers, Giving Life

Maternal, newborn and child health

US and Norway invest in new partnership: Saving Mothers, Giving Life

1 JUNE 2012 | OSLO, NORWAY — The US government has joined Merck for Mothers, Every Mother Counts, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in a new initiative to reduce maternal mortality. The announcement took place at a global health conference on Friday, 1 June sponsored by the Norwegian government, entitled “A World in Transition: Charting a New Path in Global Health.” US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the US government would commit $75 million to the “Saving Mothers, Giving Life” partnership. Norway pledged another roughly $80 million to the initiative.

In her keynote speech, Secretary Clinton underscored the need to look to maternal health as a barometer for measuring the strength of healthcare systems around the world. “When a woman in labor experiences complications, it takes a strong system to keep her alive,” she said. “It not only takes skilled doctors, midwives, and nurses, it takes reliable transportation, well-equipped clinics and hospitals that are open 24 hours a day. Where these elements are in place, more often than not women will survive childbirth. When they aren’t, more often than not they die or suffer life-changing, traumatic injuries.”

Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jonas Gahr Støre, hosted the conference where the Mrs Clinton was keynote speaker. There was also be a panel discussion over various aspects of sustainability with Tamar Manuelyan Atinc, Vice President, World Bank; Haja Zainab Bangura, Minister of Health and Sanitation, Sierra Leone and Professor K. Srinath Reddy, President, Public Health Foundation of India.

Prior to the seminar Norad facilitated four workshops on Economic Benefits of Investing in Women’s Health; Saving Mothers, Giving Lives; Addressing conflict-related sexual violence; and Innovation – Scaling Mobile-Based Solutions and Health Information Systems. A special Commentary by Health Advisor to the Norwegian President, Dr Tore Godal, was published in The Lancet.

Accelerating the global response to reduce maternal mortality

“The meeting of Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and US Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton at the Global Health in Transition conference in Oslo, Norway, on June 1, 2012 advances global health as an essential component of foreign policy. The meeting of these two senior diplomats along with other government leaders and health professionals from around the world reaffirms global health as a vital matter of state…”

Link to The Lancet full Commentary text by Dr Godal