New Mums 'Abandoned' During Labour

One in three new mothers is left alone during or just after labour because maternity services are overstretched, according to a survey.

The poll of 3,500 mums found almost half (43%) said they did not have access to a midwife after giving birth.

More than a third (35%) of those questioned by The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) and parenting website Netmums.com said they had been abandoned during or after labour at a time when they felt worried.

Sally Russell, co-founder of Netmums.com, said: "This survey's results should demonstrate to the Government just how stretched maternity services are.

"It shows that our members want, need and deserve one-to-one care from midwives but they are not getting this and are left alone and feeling abandoned during labour, and especially in the vital post-natal period."

    All women can expect individual support from a midwife, supported by a wider maternity team, throughout her labour and birth.

Health Minister Ann Keen

One mother said of her labour: "There were too many people on and off shifts.

"There was no continuity of care, therefore no-one was able to make sound decisions.

"I (had) seven different midwives involved just during labour. I ended up having an emergency Caesarean section."

In 2007, the Government said all women in England should be supported by a midwife they know and trust throughout their pregnancy and after birth.

Ministers promised that "by the end of 2009" women would be able to choose where they give birth and have better continuity of midwifery care.

But the survey found only 68% of women were offered a choice of where to give birth.

Baby buggy

Some mothers felt abandoned

There were some positive responses in the research, including 83% of women saying they had the name and telephone number of a midwife they could contact if they were worried.

And 72% said they had their first appointment with a midwife as soon as they wanted it.

RCM general secretary Cathy Warwick said she was pleased some aspects of maternity services were rated highly but that overall the results painted a "worrying and disturbing picture".

Reacting to the survey, Health Minister Ann Keen said: "There has been record investment in the NHS in recent years including an additional £330m for maternity services.

"All women can expect individual support from a midwife, supported by a wider maternity team, throughout her labour and birth."

NEWS BY:http://news.sky.com

The Naked and Famous set to get more famous

Kiwi band The Naked and Famous are in the running for an influential music honour in the UK.

The five-piece band from Auckland features on the longlist for the BBC's Sound of 2011 along with 14 other rising stars of music.

With their synth-rock sound, the band burst onto the underground scene in 2008 with EPs This Machine and No Light. Last year they supported Nine Inch Nails and their pulsating single All of This got major airplay.

They followed up with Young Blood written for noisy album Passive Me, Aggressive You released in September, proving they were more than electro synth-rock band.

The band is made up of producer, singer and co-founder Thom Powers, producer Aaron Short, singer and co-founder Alisa Xayalith, bass player David Beadle, and drummer Jesse Wood.

The BBC list is put together by more than 160 UK tastemakers, including radio DJs and producers, TV presenters and producers, newspaper critics, magazine and website editors and respected bloggers, who were asked to name their favourite new acts.

The Sound of 2011 winner and top five are out in January.

Sound of 2011: The Longlist

James Blake
Anna Calvi
Daley
Esben & the Witch
Jessie J
Clare Maguire
Mona
The Naked & Famous
Nero
Jai Paul
The Vaccines
Warpaint
Jamie Woon
Wretch 32
Yuck .

NEWS BY:http://tvnz.co.nz/entertainment-news

Susan Boyle plans for musical

Susan Boyle plans to star in a musical about her life.

The Scottish singing sensation, who shot to worldwide fame after appearing on UK TV talent show Britain's Got Talent in 2009, is in talks to have her meteoric rise to fame chronicled in a new stage production and even hopes to take the lead role in the show.

She said: "I'm definitely going to be on stage. I'd rather that than having to sit watching people up there looking like me.

"I want to be doing the music parts, so I'll be coming in and out of the show. I'm looking forward to doing some live work. It'll be really nice to see so many of the people who have supported me in person."

Producers are reportedly planning to take the show - which will chronicle the 49-year-old star's modest upbringing in Blackburn, West Lothian, her period living alone with her cat and her rise to stardom - on a huge UK tour late next year as they believe it will be extremely popular.

A source told The Sun newspaper: "Susan has incredibly loyal fans. People will be travelling from all over the world to see her perform in her own musical.

"I wouldn't be surprised if some of them book tickets to watch it five nights in a row."

NEWS BY:http://tvnz.co.nz/entertainment-news

Genetic Data Nix Folate Role in Heart Disease

The final nail may have been placed in the coffin of homocysteine-lowering therapy as a preventive measure for coronary heart disease.

The overall result from large, unpublished datasets shows lifelong moderate homocysteine elevation has little or no effect on coronary heart disease.

A comprehensive analysis -- including published and unpublished research that involved more than 236,000 participants -- suggests that even lifelong exposure to elevated homocysteine "has little or no effect," according to Robert Clarke, MD, of the Clinical Trial Service Unit at the University of Oxford, in Oxford, England, and colleagues.

The key finding is that, in several large unpublished datasets, genetic variation that increases or decreases natural homocysteine levels did not significantly affect the risk of coronary heart disease, Clarke and colleagues reported online in PLoS Medicine.

That was coupled with a null effect in an updated meta-analysis of 10 clinical trials testing the effect of folic acid, a homocysteine-lowering compound.

Taken together, that evidence suggests that a significant but modest benefit of lower homocysteine in an updated meta-analysis of 86 published case-control studies was an "artifact of publication bias," the researchers argued.

Clarke and colleagues noted that a common genetic variant -- named C677T -- in the methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase gene (MTHFR) markedly affects homocysteine levels.

Specifically, people with the TT genotype (individuals in whom both copies of the MTHFR gene have the nucleotide thymine at position 677) of the C677T polymorphism have natural levels that are about 20% higher than those with the CC variant. The CT variant has an effect that is intermediate but closer to CC than TT.

That suggests the possibility of a natural "Mendelian" experiment, and luckily the increasing use of large scale-genomics analysis has led to the creation of 19 large datasets -- with a total of more than 100,000 participants -- in which variation in the MTHFR gene was analyzed, although not as a primary focus.

Clarke and colleagues designated those studies as "unpublished" because odds ratios for coronary heart disease were not the primary aim and have not been reported. The studies had a total of 48,175 coronary heart disease cases and 67,961 controls.

If the associations seen in the earlier case-control studies were causal, the researchers argued, the 20% higher homocysteine in those with the TT variant should imply about an 8% increase in coronary heart disease risk, compared with CC carriers.

But a meta-analysis of the effect of the TT variant in the 19 studies showed a non-significant odds ratio of 1.02, with a 95% confidence interval from 0.98 to 1.07, they reported.

Even in the sub-population of participants who had not been given folate supplements in food, where the effect of the TT variant might be expected to be stronger, it remained non-significant, with an odds ratio of 1.01.

On the other hand, Clarke and colleagues reported, the updated analysis of the 86 biochemical studies -- with 28,617 cases and 41,857 controls -- suggested that having the TT variant increased the risk of coronary heart disease by 15% (odds ratio 1.15, 95% CI from 1.09 to 1.21).

The results of the two analyses are "discrepant," the researchers noted, and the discrepancy "is too extreme to be plausibly dismissed as a chance finding."

Instead, they argued for a "substantial" effect of publication bias.

To bolster the argument, they noted that their analysis of the 10 intervention studies, with a total of more than 50,000 participants, found that lowering homocysteine for at least five years had no significant effect on the risk of coronary heart disease. The odds ratio was 1.02 (95% CI from 0.96 to 1.08).

"Both the genetic studies and the trials argue against the use of (homocysteine-lowering agents) as a means of reducing coronary heart disease risk," they concluded.

NEWS BY:http://www.medpagetoday.com

Scottish childcare among the UK’s costliest

PARENTS in Scotland are facing some of the highest childcare costs in Britain with some paying annual bills of nearly £12,000, according to a new report.

Scotland’s out-of-school clubs have the second highest average costs in the UK, while childminding charges are the highest outside of the south of England.

Costs also vary across local authoritieswith the average weekly prices in Scotland for nursery care for children under two ranging from £67.50 to £142.50, according to the report by the Daycare Trust and Children in Scotland charities.

A parent using 25 hours of care over 50 weeks of the year in Scotland’s most expensive nursery would face a bill of £11,688.

Individual authorities were not identified in the report.

Meanwhile, the survey also found that only a fifth of Scottish local authorities said they had enough childcare for parents working full time, while just one in ten had sufficient for those working outside normal office hours or living in rural areas.

The Scottish Government insisted it was committed to bringing down the cost of childcare, but charities have called for legislation to provide universal free childcare.

Daycare Trust chief executive Anand Shukla said: “The high price of childcare faced by many Scottish families is putting significant pressure on family budgets at a time when tax credits have been cut.

“These problems are exacerbated by significant gaps in childcare availability and a postcode lottery in prices.

“Greater management of the childcare market is needed, both at government and at local authority level.

“Today, we are calling on the Scottish Government to take the lead in implementing the Early Years Framework by legislating to provide a childcare place for every child.”

The report also found the cost gap between private and state nurseries was highest in Scotland, at least £20 per week compared with less than £10 south of the Border.

Some costs have improved in the past year in Scotland. Nursery places for children aged two and over dropped by 3.1 per cent and out-of-school clubs decreased 1.9 per cent. But childminding costs for children aged two and up climbed 5 per cent – more than English or Welsh averages.

The report’s authors urged the Scottish Government to put pressure on Westminster to amend regulations to allow self-employed parents to claim childcare vouchers. They also said Scottish local authorities should be forced to collect better data on childcare provision.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said it was committed to expanding and improving the quality of early learning and childcare provision, focusing on those who were most in need.

She added: “Since 2007, we have delivered real increases in free pre-school provision, benefiting around 100,000 children each year.

“In addition, we’re providing £4.5 million over the next three years to local authorities to deliver additional early learning and childcare for all looked after two-year-olds; and a further £4.5m to promote community-based solutions to family support and childcare.

“This government is committed to tackling the high cost of childcare through changes to the welfare and tax systems. Having control over our tax and benefit systems would undoubtedly help deliver this.”

A total of 26 of the 32 Scottish local authorities took part in the survey, carried out between November 2011 and January 2012.

• Glasgow mother of two Steffi Keir, 41, who works in the charitable sector, pays about £600 a month for three days a week of childcare for her daughters, aged five and 17 months.

She said to go private would cost far more and there should be a system of universally subsidised childcare, except where parents can really afford it.

“We got our oldest into a local authority nursery at the age of three, so before that we paid a childminder £500 a month,” she said. “I could be a stay-at-home mum, but it would be difficult for me not to even work part-time, because it’s a very fulfilling job.”

NEWS BY:http://www.scotsman.com