Women's Health

A revolution in health care has caught Americans off guard. New research tells us that much of what our doctors and hospitals do for pregnancy and birth is wrong, expensive, and dangerous. That same research has found good, inexpensive, and safe methods for bringing babies into the world.
Although the United States may offer some of the finest medical technology on earth, millions of our citizens suffer inadequate health care. And the cost of medical care has zoomed to 810 billion dollars a year – a sum to stagger any treasury.
Add to this the fact that of the 4.17 million babies born in the United States each year, 39,000 die before their first birthdays of ills that are largely preventable. As for infant safety worldwide, statistics show that the United States has 9.7 deaths for every 1,000 births -ranking a lowly 22nd. Japan is first, with only 4.4 deaths per 1,000; Sweden is second, with 5.7.
But the new science of birth could improve that. A research team led by Dr. Murray Enkin has produced perhaps the world’s most careful and systematic study on childbirth. For 10 years, this team searched the world for solid scientific data on what’s wrong and what’s right in the handling of pregnancy by hospitals, doctors, midwives, nurses, and pregnant women themselves. Dr. Enkin is professor emeritus of obstetrics at Canada’s McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and a principal researcher for the pregnancy project at Oxford University in England.
Much confusion surrounds pregnancy, Dr. Enkin says. “There are old wives’ tales, old doctors’ tales, medical textbook statements, doctors’ beliefs, scientific data, and communal myths.”
Although many caregivers do a great deal of good for mother and baby, Dr. Enkin’s team found that several do not. For example, he says, it is very important to provide a pregnant woman with social and psychological support. It reduces her anxieties about an easy and successful delivery, about the baby’s health and her own, and about the running of the family after the baby is born. However, Dr. Enkin adds, too many physicians fail to provide such support.
The Oxford team also discovered that hospitals and the staff members who oversee births -primarily doctors and nurses – routinely employ some methods of care that ultimately not only offer little benefit to mother or infant but actually can be dangerous to them. For example, some hospitals put healthy newborn babies in nurseries to prevent their mothers from passing on infections to them. However, evidence shows that generally it is much safer for the infants to room with their mothers, in whose bodies; after all, they were carried and nurtured, and very likely instilled with immunities. In the nursery, on the other hand, germs spread to the healthy infants from the sick ones.
Research shows that keeping mother and child apart for 4 hours or more can have dire effects, such as the failure on breast-feeding and the restriction of maternal affectionate behavior. How such separations affect maternal behavior has been the focus of much of this research. Urging that mother and newborn share a room, rather than be separated, the Oxford team cites a study suggesting that such routine hospital separation policy has led to an increased risk of child abuse and   neglect   among   socially   deprived, first-time mothers.
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WOMEN’S HEALTH