Pubdate: Sat, 19 Feb 2000
Source: Examiner, The (Ireland)
Copyright: Examiner Publications Ltd, 2000
Contact:  http://www.examiner.ie/
Author: Caroline O'Doherty

DANGERS OF DRUGS TAKING BEFORE PREGNANCY STRESSED

WOMEN planning to become pregnant are to be warned of the dangers to their 
baby of using drugs in a nationwide information campaign.

Expectant drug users are also to be told where and how to access advice and 
help throughout their pregnancy and for their new born child.

A midwife liaison service for pregnant drug users set up in two of the 
country's biggest maternity hospitals last year already has the potential 
to be over run with requests for help.

A third of the 4,040 addicts currently registered at treatment centres in 
Dublin are women of child bearing age and there are just two liaison 
midwifes one each at the Rotunda and Coombe hospitals to cater for them.

Deirdre McCann, who runs the programme at the Rotunda, warned demand on the 
service was likely to increase. "Drug use has increased disproportionately 
among women that's beginning to show up in attendances at clinics. Normally 
the ratio is 60 40 with women making up the smaller group but at one city 
clinic the numbers are now practically equal," she said.

Ms McCann told a conference on Young People and Drugs there had also been a 
change in the type of drug use among the women attending the liaison service.

At the launch of the service last March there were no cocaine users but 
there were now several. Cocaine is particularly dangerous to pregnancy and 
expectant women using the drug are at risk of hypertension, thrombosis and 
miscarriage.

Babies born to cocaine using mothers are likely to be underweight and 
irritable and risk having heart problems, bone deformities, eye defects and 
kidney trouble.

But even minor tranquillisers used in an unprescribed fashion a major 
problem in the capital at the moment can harm an unborn child.
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