Obesity behind over half UK maternal birth deaths

Obesity behind over half UK maternal birth deaths
A passenger waits for a delayed flight at Heathrow airport's terminal four in London, August 12, 2006. More than half of mothers who died during child birth were overweight, a report found on Tuesday. (Toby Melville/Reuters)LONDON (Reuters Life!) - More than half of British motherswho died during child birth were overweight, a report found onTuesday.
The Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health(CEMACH) said maternal-related deaths in Britain are at a twodecade high.
In its annual report, "Saving Mothers' Lives: reviewingmaternal deaths to make motherhood safer," it found that of thealmost 300 women who died during childbirth between 2003 and2005 from pregnancy-related conditions, more than half wereobese. The deaths left 520 children motherless, it added.
Obese pregnant women are more at risk of dying, sufferingheart disease, miscarriage, diabetes, infections and bloodclots.
Although the death rate has not changed significantly since2000, it has risen by around 40 percent since 1985/87, thestudy showed.
It also found that women from poorer backgrounds were up toseven times more likely to die from pregnancy-relatedcomplications.
About 40 percent of deaths were preventable, it added.
Tuesday's report criticized doctors for failing to identifyand manage common medical conditions or potential emergenciesoutside their immediate area of expertise.
It comes just a few days after the Healthcare Commissionfound that one in four women giving birth in NHS hospitals wereleft alone during labor, in clear contravention of officialguidelines.
The report said that maternal obesity was now a "major andgrowing risk factor for maternal death."
It called for more pre-conception counseling and advice forobese woman to help tackle the problem.
CEMACH director, Gwyneth Lewis, said the report "clearlyshows the impact that a mother's overall health has on theoutcome of her pregnancy."
President of the Royal College of Obstetricians andGynecologists, Professor Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, said maternalobesity puts more pressure on resources.
"Obesity is fast emerging as the public health issue of ourgeneration and its impact on maternity must be takenseriously," he said in a statement.
"Maternity services are already struggling to cope with theincreasing birth rate."
(Editing by Stephen Addison and Paul Casciato)

Bird flu kills first human in Pakistan, child first case in Myanmar

A Pakistani poultry worker feeds chickens on a farm on the outskirts of Karachi in April 2007. Bird flu hit two countries Saturday as it was confirmed that a man who died culling infected birds in Pakistan became the country's first human fatality, while a seven-year-old girl became Myanmar's first human case.(AFP/File/Asif Hassan )ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Bird flu hit two countries Saturday as it was confirmed that a man who died culling infected birds in Pakistan became the country's first human fatality, while a seven-year-old girl became Myanmar's first human case.
Pakistan's health ministry on Saturday also confirmed that one of the dead man's brothers who took part in the cull also died, but he was not tested for the virus, a ministry spokesman told AFP. It was not immediately known why the second man was not tested.
But the spokesman ruled out any case of human-to-human transmission -- a development that could have signalled a mutation of the virus with the possibility to kill millions around the world.
Six people were confirmed to have been infected with the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, all of them in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, which borders Afghanistan, the ministry said in a statement.
"Five of them have fully recovered. One of the confirmed cases died in hospital while his brother, who could not be tested, has also died," it said.
Ministry spokesman Mazhar Nisar said the confirmed victim, the brother who died, and two other brothers who were infected but survived all worked on the same cull of infected birds.
"We are not certain how (the brother) died because we could not conduct his testing," Nisar said.
Hospital officials in the provincial capital of Peshawar told AFP that the confirmed victim Muhammad Tariq died late last month, a few days before his brother, who was admitted with similar symptoms but was not tested.
The virus is usually transmitted to humans from infected birds but scientists fear it could mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans, sparking a global pandemic that could kill millions.
Nisar said there had been no human transmission in this case.
The World Health Organisation confirmed Saturday that the girl in Myanmar was hospitalised in eastern Shan state in late November after developing a fever and headache. But she was discharged this week after showing signs of recovery, a Myanmar health official said.
"She is the first human case (of bird flu)," the official from Myanmar's livestock department said.
The World Health Organisation said a team of Myanmar health officials were investigating to try to confirm the source of her infection.
"The case was detected through routine surveillance following an outbreak of H5N1 in poultry in the area in mid-November," the WHO said in a statement.
"She has now recovered," it said.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed more than 200 people worldwide, mostly in Southeast Asia, since late 2003.
The World Bank said last week that international donors had committed more than 400-million dollars to fight bird flu at a conference in New Delhi aimed at devising ways to tackle the disease.

Vietnam conducts anti-bird flu rehearsal

HANOI, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam has implemented a rehearsal on combating potential bird flu outbreaks among people at the Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi capital, local newspaper Pioneer reported Wednesday.
At the rehearsal on Tuesday, means of first aid, transport and isolation for bird flu patients were prepared in a mock situation, in which three out of 300 passengers on an international flight from an affected region, which was about to land, had fever, and one had breathing difficulties.
Environment from the airplane to isolation areas, passengers' belongings, and conveyors were disinfected.
In the mock situation, bird flu virus strain H5N1 mutated for human-to-human transmission in a small scale and broken out in some countries.
Vietnam has detected seven bird flu patients from the five northern provinces of Vinh Phuc, Thai Nguyen, Thanh Hoa, Ha Nam and Ha Tay since May 10, of whom four died, according to the Preventive Medicine Department under the Vietnamese Health Ministry.

Pakistan's human bird flu cases rise to 8

BEIJING, Dec. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday the cases of H5N1 avian influenza among people in Pakistan have risen to eight.
WHO spokesman Greg Hartl gave the confirmation about the first such cases in Pakistan's remote North-West Frontier province through a telephone interview.
He detailed that one patient died, six recovered and one remained under medical supervision in the cities of Abbotabad and Mansehra.
The eight cases have a combination of infections from poultry and limited person-to-person transmission from close contact, according to Keiji Fukuda, coordinator of WHO's global influenza program.
"Right now it doesn't look like pure human to human transmission. It looks like the veterinarian, who was the index case, and a number of other suspect cases had poultry exposure," Fukuda said in an interview.
"It is definitely possible that we have a mixed scenario where we have poultry to human infection and possible human to human transmission within a family, which is not yet verified."
But human-to-human transmission "would not be particularly surprising or unprecedented," he added.
Pakistani and WHO officials said there was no immediate cause for alarm and the United Nations agency was not raising its level of pandemic alert for the time being.
Fukuda said it was very reassuring that "we are not seeing large increases in the number of cases."
But some public health officials worry that should the virus gain the ability to transmit easily among humans, a pandemic could occur.
Hartl said, "Our concern is that once this virus remains in the animal population, it mutates into a more transmissible form. And the more they (the viruses) stay in the animal population, then we have a panic situation."
The WHO Tuesday noted the death of Indonesia's latest avian flu patient, a 47-year-old man from Tangerang who died Dec 13. The country's overall H5N1 count has reached 115 cases with 93 deaths.
Since 2003, the health agency has tallied 341 cases among people in 14 countries and regions, 210 of them fatal.

EU confirms bird flu control measures in place in Germany

BRUSSELS, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- Following an outbreak of bird flu in Germany, the European Commission said on Monday they have defined the risk area and confirmed the control measures already in place in Germany.
The German authorities informed the commission on Saturday of an outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza in a small holding of 11 chickens in Landkreis Oberhavel, north of Berlin.
The precautionary measures laid down in European Union (EU) legislation are being applied, including the culling of the poultry on the holding and establishment of a 3- km protection zone and 10-km surveillance zone around the outbreak area, said the commission, the executive body of the EU.
In the protection zone, all domestic birds must be kept indoors, poultry cannot be moved, except directly to the slaughterhouse, and meat cannot be dispatched from the zone unless very stringent conditions are met.
Investigations into the source of the outbreak are ongoing, but so far no other holdings in the risk zones have shown any sign of the disease, said the commission.
The disease situation will be reviewed by EU member sates on Wednesday.
Editor: Yan Liang

WHO to investigate bird flu cases in Pakistan, Myanmar

BEIJING, Dec. 17 (Xinhuanet) -- The World Health Organisation (WHO) has sent experts to help investigate the cause of first bird flu cases in people in Pakistan and Myanmar and find out if the virus was transmitted through human contact, according to media reports Sunday.
WHO meanwhile praised Pakistan and Myanmar for their swiftly reporting the cases after the outbreak.
Two brothers Mohammad Ilyas and Tariq, who were brought to a hospital from Mansehra in North West Frontier Province on suspicion of carrying H5N1 virus, died of bird flu in Pakistan Thursday.
"The two brothers have been confirmed as bird flu victims and are the first human sufferers of the disease in our country," Dr Siddiqur Rahman, Acting Chief Executive of the Khyber Teaching Hospital in Pakistan.
In Myanmar, the first human infection of bird flu was known to the public on Saturday. A 7-year old girl, Ma Nan Kham Tha, was found infected with bird flu virus among four suspected of carrying the virus last month and was kept in quarantine and given a dosage of timiflu pills since Nov. 27 until her discharge on Dec. 12.
Specimens of the four suspected were first sent to a lab in Yangon which confirmed on Nov. 26 the girl's infection. The human samples of the four were also sent to a lab in Bangkok as well as the WHO lab in Tokyo and those laboratory tests further confirmed the status.
Khalif Bile, WHO representative in Pakistan, said preliminary tests had been carried out, adding the organization was encouraging the governments to carry out confirmation tests and the results should be available by Tuesday.
The H5N1 virus has killed at least 208 people worldwide since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003. So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds.
(Agencies)