Midwifery basics. Infant feeding: Managing baby related challenges

Infant feeding: is the twelfth series of ‘Midwifery basics’ targeted at practising midwives. It aims to provide information to raise awareness of the impact of the work of midwives on women’s experience and encourage midwives to seek further information through a series of activities. In this fifth article Joyce Marshall considers a range of baby related issues that pose challenges for both mothers and midwives in relation to infant feeding

Knowledge Summary 23: Human Rights & Accountability

Progress has been made in reducing maternal and child mortality, yet millions continue to die from preventable causes. These deaths represent an accountability challenge and a major concern shared by both the health and human rights communities. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) commit to reducing these deaths. Powerful complementarities exist between MDGs and human rights.1 The MDGs generate attention, mobilise resources and contribute technical health monitoring approaches. Human rights offer a fundamental emphasis on accountability, systematic and sustained attention to inequities and a legal grounding of commitments. This knowledge summary explores human rights accountability systems at community, country, regional and international levels and the potential synergies for achieving both human rights and public health goals including, and beyond, the MDGs

Placental Transfusion for Asphyxiated Infants.

The current recommendation for umbilical cord management of non-vigorous infants (limp, pale, and not breathing) who need resuscitation at birth is to immediately clamp the umbilical cord. This recommendation is due in part to insufficient evidence for delayed cord clamping (DCC) or umbilical cord milking (UCM). These methods may provide a neuroprotective mechanism that also facilitates cardiovascular transition for non-vigorous infants at birth

Preventive Newborn Male Circumcision: What Is the Child's Best Interest?

Preventive newborn male circumcision has been at the center of scientific debate for many years. The reason for promoting preventive newborn male circumcision, is the reduction of the incidence of UTIs (in the first six months of life), penile cancer, transmission of STDs/HIV infection/AIDS. However preventive interventions in the newborn involving violations of bodily integrity elicit several ethical questions. In this article, we reviewed the literature regarding circumcision, the prevention of UTIs, penile cancer, transmission of STDs/HIV infection/AIDS and complications of this practice in the neonatal period. The very limited reduction of incidence of UTIs and the uncertain preventive role of newborn male circumcision towards penile cancer, STDs/HIV infection and AIDS, makes it difficult to justify male circumcision in newborns. Moreover, the challenge in obtaining a unanimous opinion on newborn male circumcision derives from the fact that, as a preventive intervention, it requires evaluation criteria that are not comparable to those of therapeutic treatments. Since preventive male circumcision determines permanent alteration of the body, some authors believe that it can be used only in subjects that are capable of giving their valid consent. In the case of a newborn, the ″child's best interest″ should be used as a standard, but preventive newborn male circumcision does not satisfy it

Pioneering Women\u27s Committee Struggles with Hard Times

[Excerpt] The Women\u27s Committee of IUE Local 201, established informally in 1976 and officially in 1978, is one of the oldest and longest-lived union women\u27s committees in the country. It took root and thrived within a large and overwhelmingly male General Electric manufacturing complex in the Greater Boston area and within one of the oldest, most democratic and most progressive union locals in the labor movement. For the past 11 years, the Committee has battled an extremely insensitive and recalcitrant GE management over a wide range of issues — winning substantial victories for training and entry of women into skilled jobs, for comparable worth wage adjustments in traditional jobs, and for pregnancy disability benefits and parental leave. Committee members have counseled hundreds of women and spearheaded fights for individual grievances on pregnancy disability, sexual harassment and discrimination. Within the local, the Committee\u27s activities have created a more positive climate for women to become stewards and committee members and to run for offices on the Policy Board. Most of the Committee leaders and many of the active members are a key part of the progressive wing within Local 201. But the local now faces massive layoffs triggered by GE\u27s transfer of work to other plants in the U.S. and abroad. The cuts began in June 1987 and are expected to reach 3,000 or 4,000 members by the middle of 1989. With its ranks being cut in half, Local 201 membership is understandably uneasy about its future, and many of the Women\u27s Committee\u27s past accomplishments are now in jeopardy. As preparations begin for the national GE contract, which expires in June, GE is pushing for major concessions as the price to pay for job security. The progressive movement is faced with the dual tasks of opposing concessions and pushing to save jobs. In this context, the Women\u27s Committee\u27s challenge is to push ahead with its agenda in a very difficult political climate. As 1988 begins, both Local 201 and its Women\u27s Committee are in rapid transition

The Rhesus Factor and Disease Prevention

First published by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, 2004. ©The Trustee of the Wellcome Trust, London, 2004. All volumes are freely available online at: www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/wellcome_witnesses/Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 3 June 2003. Introduction by Professor Doris T Zallen.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 3 June 2003. Introduction by Professor Doris T Zallen.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 3 June 2003. Introduction by Professor Doris T Zallen.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 3 June 2003. Introduction by Professor Doris T Zallen.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 3 June 2003. Introduction by Professor Doris T Zallen.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 3 June 2003. Introduction by Professor Doris T Zallen.Consists of the edited transcripts of Witness SeThe prevention of rhesus disease of the newborn is a stunning medical success story. This disease afflicted thousands of newborns each year, causing serious health problems, even death. Yet from the early 1940s to the 1970s – British and American researchers uncovered the basis of the disease and developed the medical intervention that could prevent its occurrence. Many of the key steps leading to this remarkable achievement took place at the University of Liverpool School of Medicine. Chaired by Professor Sir David Weatherall, this Witness Seminar examines the factors that triggered these studies and the challenges that confronted scientists and clinicians; the intellectual, institutional, and social factors that guided the work; the crucial insights; and the vistas that the prevention of rhesus disease has opened in fetal medicine. Participants include Professor Robin Coombs, the late Professor Ronald Finn, Dr Nevin Hughes-Jones, Professor Patrick Mollison, Dr Archie Norman, Dr Derrick Tovey, Professor Charles Whitfield, Professor John Woodrow and Professor Doris Zallen. Zallen, D T, Christie D A, Tansey E M. (eds) (2004) The Rhesus factor and disease prevention, Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, vol. 22. London: The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL. ISBN 978 0 85484 099 1minars organized by the History of Twentieth Century Medicine Group and held at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London is funded by the Wellcome Trust,which is a registered charity, no. 210183