Conjoined twins separated, out of comas and ‘neurologically sound’

The conjoined twins separated in Australia have both come of out of their comas, their prognosis ‘really really good’.

It took two years of planning, a 16-member medical team, 25 hours of separation surgery, and six hours of reconstructive surgery, but previously conjoined twins Krishna and Trishna are now separated. Both girls are “neurologically sound” after waking from induced comas.

The twins, brought to Melbourne from Bangladesh in 2007, were originally given up for adoption by Kartik and Lavlee Mollik because they couldn’t afford the medical costs for the twins. When the Sunday Herald Sun told the biological parents of the successful operation, they were overjoyed.

“I don’t know what to say. I am very, very happy,” Lavlee Mollik told the Herald Sun. “This is such a great relief.”

Mollik told the paper that she had given the children up unconditionally and knew that she had no legal claim to them.

“I won’t want them back,” she told another newspaper in Bangladesh. “I just want to see them once. They are my children and I am a mother. I cannot forget them.”
Children First Foundation’s Moira Kelly, legal guardian of the children, said, “All I can say is it’s a dream come true to think at the end of the week a mother knows, somewhere in Bangladesh, that her two little daughters… they’re alive.”

Kelly hopes to get the twins face-to-face soon. “We are hoping in the next day, probably tomorrow or today, is to bring the cots together so they can feel each other,” she said.

“They’re too weak to look at each other, they’re too sleepy so we’re not there for that yet, but we’re early days and you know, take it day by day.”

         

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Craigslist: Want to adopt a baby?

Police are looking for a woman who put an advertisement on Craigslist asking for a person to adopt her baby.

Police in Federal Way, Washington are looking for a woman who advertised her child as being adoptable on the Web site Craigslist.

“According to the Web site, there is a person who is pregnant, and it looks like she’s putting her baby up for adoption and having someone pay the medical bills,” said Ray Bunk, of the Federal Way Police Department.

“We are attempting to get a warrant, and we’ll be attempting to find the IP address from where the Craigslist posting came from and conducting an investigation from there.”

In the state of Washington, private adoptions are legal within certain state regulations, but the investigators are cautious.

“We’re just trying to make sure nothing illegal is going on,” Bunk told the Seattle Times. “We want to check on the welfare of the mother and unborn child.”

The author of the ad described herself as a 22-year-old woman from the town, stating that she was almost five months pregnant and the father didn’t want it. The author claimed to be seeking an affluent couple to adopt the baby and pay the associated medical expense.

It’s not the first time that adoption ads have appeared on Craigslist. On November 30, 2007, a similar advertisement appeared, originating in Texas. As in Washington, it’s not illegal to privately adopt in Texas, and no legal action was taken in that case.

         

Baby gorillas set to soon have new play area in Congo

Baby gorillas orphaned from their mother will receive a new sanctuary in east Congo.

In 2007, park rangers in the Congo’s Virunga National Park found two baby gorillas, their mother slain. One of the two-month-old babies was clinging to the body of its dead mother, and the other was found on the back of its older brother.

Park officials quickly took the babies and moved them to a temporary location in the city of Goma.

“If they had not been taken out of the wild, they would have died,” said Samantha Newport, communication director of the park.

Officials weren’t sure who was responsible for the death of the mothers, but they suspected that illegal loggers were responsible.

The group soon set to work building a new habitat for the baby gorillas, Ndeze and Ndakasi, in July of 2007, but work was cut short when rebels overran the park as part of the civil war that’s raged in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Work continued later that year once hostilities had subsided.

Officials announced yesterday that the 2.5 acre sanctuary, the Senkwekwe Center, located inside the Virunga National Park, would be completed by March.

They said that the interior holding facility for the sanctuary would be roomy, and the center would also include special visitation platforms, an education center, and medical facilities for the animals.

Virunga National Park’s director, Emmanuel de Merode, was pleased with recent progress, stating that the center offers “a unique opportunity to enable the local population to see gorillas, and provides a launch pad for the veterinary activities that are conducted throughout Virunga.”

         

UN report adds dimension of gender to climate change discussions

A new UN report has stated that women are most likely to be affected by climate change, but it stopped short of directly encouraging population control.

A report issued Thursday by the U.N. has recommended the addition of gender elements to climate change discussions.

The report, United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) 2009, claimed that women — especially those in underdeveloped nations — were most at risk to the effects of climate change. It indicated that the female agricultural work force and caretakers of the world were ill-equipped to deal with changes effectively.

“They are among the most vulnerable to climate change, partly because in many countries they make up the larger share of the agricultural work force and partly because they tend to have access to fewer income-earning opportunities,” said the authors of the report.

“Women manage households and care for family members, which often limits their mobility and increases their vulnerability to sudden weather-related natural disasters. Drought and erratic rainfall force women to work harder to secure food, water and energy for their homes.”

“Girls drop out of school to help their mothers with these tasks. This cycle of deprivation, poverty and inequality undermines the social capital needed to deal effectively with climate change.”

“Marginalization of and discrimination against women and the lack of attention to the way gender inequality hampers development, health, equity and overall human well being — all undermine countries’ resilience to climate change.”

The report added that climate change would prompt internal displacement and international migration, something that women may be heavily affected by.

However, while the report indicated that population growth has been responsible for 40 percent to 60 percent of previous emission growth, it stopped short of suggesting that direct population reduction would be needed to curb the problem. The report instead attempted to frame the issue as giving women more options and education regarding the birth control they want rather than making it a nefarious plan by first-world countries to limit how many babies women can have.

Denmark’s Minister for Development Cooperation, Ulla Tørnæs, agreed. “Denmark has for many years now been a strong advocate for a woman’s right to decide how many children she wants and when she wants them,” she told The Copenhagen Post.

“Improving women’s right to choose will be crucial in stabilizing population growth, sustaining development and reducing poverty. In my view the key is to accelerate access to modern contraception and family planning.”

The report comes a few weeks before the December 7 United Nations climate conference held in Copenhagen, Denmark. Officials from 192 countries hope to create a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

         

UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child: 20 years later

The 20th anniversary of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child is commemorated today, but the UN stresses that more work must be done for the world’s children.

On November 20, 1989, United Nations General Assembly resolution 44/25 was signed, “[r]ecognizing that the child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding.”

This human rights treaty has the most global support of any such treaty, being ratified by 193 countries. Additionally, the U.N. has stated that the resolution has had remarkable achievements including reaching an 80 percent success rate of primary school enrollment around the world.

Elizabeth Gibbons, UNICEF’s deputy director, told the BBC: “At any time across the world, in any city, in any media, you’ll find a story about children’s rights, that’s the big change. Yes, there are many problems not resolved, but now children matter; they matter to society, they matter to the media, [and] they matter to politicians.”

However, there is broad recognition that there is more work to be done, not only in developing countries, but also in first-world countries.

Marie Staunton, in her column for The Guardian, notes that in the U.K., “the number of children with both parents out of work has gone up 18% and there is real pressure on the parents of the 2.3 million children living in poverty.”

She continued: “Over the last two decades the world has turned from being largely rural to being mostly urban with the rise of the sprawling mega cities. A new city the size of Birmingham is created every week, makeshift slums spring up overnight with no thought for the needs and rights of children. Dirty drinking water, poor sanitation, few schools and dangerous street work all put children at risk.”

While its true that rapid urbanization and uncountable social changes leave children behind in countries like the U.K. and U.S., conditions are often worse in parts of the world where unstable government and lackadaisical enforcement of human rights treaties has created fragile situations for children.

Today, the Associated Press published a very revealing look at how children around the globe perceive and are affected by lapses in basic human rights.

Reporter Jonathan M. Katz interviewed Saintia Pierre, a 15-year-old girl in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. According to the report, Saintia has been held captive by a family there since she was six years old, and she’s forced to cook, clean, and look after children. If she doesn’t do the tasks well, she is beaten.

While Saintia received food and money for schooling, she told Katz that “her dreams are ignored.”

“They make me feel like I’m not part of the family,” she told Katz. “When they do something for me, they remind me I don’t deserve it.”

Saintia is only one example among thousands. In a world full of children that hold the key to the future, nations must strive to continue aiding children, whether it’s under the Convention on the Rights of the Child or some other national goal.

         

Pregnant women with MS reassured by research findings

Pregnant women with multiple sclerosis (MS) are likely to have a healthy pregnancy according to new research.

New research out of the Stanford University School of Medicine shows that women suffering from MS only have a slightly increased risk of requiring caesarean delivery and are no more likely to suffer from problems like preeclampsia or premature birth.

The research, published in the November journal Neurology, focused on 18.8 million deliveries in the United States, of which approximately 10,000 deliveries coming from mothers suffering from MS. They found that 42 percent of women with MS required delivery through caesarean section while only 33 percent of women in the general population required the procedure. Risk for caesarean delivery was found to be 30 percent higher in women with MS.

Yet aside from that, the team found very little difference between MS sufferers and the general population when it came to conditions like low birth weight and preeclampsia, a condition related high blood pressure is triggered by pregnancy. Those outcomes occurred in MS mothers only 2.7 percent of the time, compared to 1.9 percent of the time in healthy mothers.

Dr. Eliza Chakravarty, co-author of the research, said: “These results are reassuring for women. Women and their doctors have been uncertain about the effect of MS on pregnancy, and some women have chosen to delay or even avoid pregnancy due to the uncertainty.”

She added that it was additionally encouraging that women with MS “did not have an increased risk of most pregnancy complications.”

The researchers also looked at women with diabetes during the study, and they found that women who had diabetes before becoming pregnant were at greater risk of having complications during pregnancy compared to women with MS.

In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Gary M. Franklin, of the University of Washington, and Dr. Helen Tremlett, of the University of British Columbia, said that the research was “a welcome addition” to existing data on the subject. The data provides better information to doctors and their female patients with MS, especially those that are pregnant or considering conception.

         

Swine flu vaccine to become available to children under five

The swine flu vaccine will be made available to children from six months to five years of age across the UK.

The Scottish Government has announced today an extension of the UK-wide swine flu policy that will offer the vaccine to healthy children between the ages of six months to five years. A similar announcement is expected to be made later in England.

Scotland’s Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon made the announcement, saying: “The decision has been made in line with independent scientific advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). It is their advice which has guided us so far in all the decisions around the vaccination program.”

“Advice from the JCVI is that young children are more at risk of contracting the virus, and the highest rate of hospitalizations has been in the under-five age group, so that is the key consideration.”

Sturgeon went on to say that most children that fall in the age range will have only “mild symptoms” and likely “will recover relatively quickly”, but stressed that it was better to be cautious.

Children will likely be invited to go to their local general practitioner to receive the vaccination, and will likely last though January of next year in order to reach everyone.

For the past few weeks, the British Government has been under pressure by the Conservative party to extend vaccinations to healthy children. Conservatives have cited statistics indicating that over 20 percent of the U.K.’s H1N1 deaths have been children under 14.

The Department of Health is expected later to release an update on the amount of people infected with N1H1 in England. Some suspected that a drop in the number of cases last week may have indicated that the situation was getting better.

However, England’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, suggested that the drop may have in part been caused by the half-term break in schools. Schools are generally known to be locations where viruses tend to spread easily.

         

‘Face’ of Michael Jackson found in baby’s ultrasound

A face that eerily resembles that of Michael Jackson was discovered when a couple reviewed the results of their unborn baby’s ultrasound.

Last month, Dawn Kelley went to Sunderland Royal Hospital to get her regularly scheduled 20-week ultrasound, but the doctors had some difficulty analyzing the results. Kelley was then sent to Grindon Lane Primary Care Centre to use the more powerful scanner, one that could more sharply focus on the internal organs of a fetus.

After obtaining the results, father-to-be, William Hickman, had his suspicions about the image.

“We were looking at the pictures again, and I just saw Jacko there,” said Hickman.

“I showed my daughter Ami, who’s six, and she saw it straight away, so I thought ‘well, if she can see it too it’s not just me seeing things.’”

“None of us are really Michael Jackson fans. I mean I like him, but we’re not crazy about him or anything,” added Hickman.

Set to give birth to her daughter in March, Kelley isn’t ready to name her Michael.

“I’ve had plenty of scans before and none of the photos have ever looked like this one. It’s a bit spooky really.

“But it is my seventh child, and they say seven is a mythical number.”

         

Women with preeclampsia more likely to have thyroid problems

Women who develop the condition preeclampsia during pregnancy may be at greater risk of reduced thyroid function and may be more likely to develop thyroid problems later in life.

A combined analysis of two different studies in the U.S. and Norway has led researchers to believe there is a link between preeclampsia and hypothyroidism.

Preeclampsia is a condition where significantly elevated blood pressure may cause complications in pregnancy and potentially damage the heart, liver, and kidneys.

Hypothyroidism is essentially the state of having an underactive thyroid, potentially leading to symptoms such as muscle aches, fatigue, and even depression.

The U.S. study made comparisons between two groups of 140 healthy pregnant women, where one group had developed preeclampsia during pregnancy and the other did not. That study found that the women who suffered preeclampsia were more likely to have reduced thyroid activity.

The Norwegian study focused on over 7,000 women who gave birth in the 1960s. Over 20 years later, the researchers tested the women’s thyroid functions. Those researchers discovered that the women that dealt with preeclampsia during any pregnancy had a higher likelihood of reduced thyroid function.

Dr. Donald Peebles, consultant obstetrician for the University College Hospital London, told the BBC that the results of the studies suggest that the treatment of preeclampsia would not be affected, but doctors may need to monitor women who develop the condition for thyroid problems.

“Pregnancy tends to unmask conditions that may be already underlying, and this may be the case here,” he told the BBC.

Dr. Susan B. Shurin, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, offered optimism to women regarding the findings.

“The findings suggest that the possible development of hypothyroidism is a consideration in patients with a history of preeclampsia,” said Shurin.

“Reduced thyroid functioning is easy to diagnose when suspected and inexpensive to treat. Replacement therapy substantially improves quality of life of affected persons.”

         

Mothercare continues growth adding 400 new jobs

Mothercare continues its strong growth with the announcement of eight new store openings before Christmas, creating 400 new jobs.

International child care and parenting center Mothercare has announced plans to open 12 new “landmark” stores in thriving shopping centers and create 400 new jobs, buoyed by an 11 percent rise in profits.

While many retailers have struggled to stay afloat, Mothercare saw a 40 percent increase in sales in April and increased overall sales this year.

Ben Gordon, Mothercare’s chief executive, told the BBC: “This has been another strong half for the Mothercare group. International has delivered a record first half with retail sales up 29.6 percent and store openings ahead of plan.”

Mothercare expects eight new parenting centers to open by Christmas. Those stores are located in Colliers Wood, King’s Lynn, Kirkcaldy, Lewisham, Newton Abbey, Poole, Stoke, and Yeovil.

They also expect 25 new centers to open by the end of 2011, claiming that the commercial property market currently has offered attractive terms on leases, especially in profitable locations that were previously unavailable.

However, the company also warned that as part of its restructuring plans, 90 underperforming stores with leases set to expire in the next few years will be targeted for changes. Mothercare indicated that it would either try to relocate the stores to popular out-of-town destinations or restructure leases before considering store closures.

Mothercare acquired chain Early Learning Centre, a chain of baby stores, for 85 million pounds in June 2007. Since then, the company has been restructuring its assets to increase profitability.

Mothercare shares rose 1.2 percent, up 7.5 pence to 633.5 pence.

         

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