Deadly Delays (or, where baby-lovers should be spending their time and attention ... [View all]

[MH1]

... rather than forcing women to have birth who don't want to, aren't ready, or have a problem pregnancy)

http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/Deadly-Delays-Watchdog-Report-Delays-at-hospitals-across-the-country-undermine-newborn-screening-programs-putting-babies-at-risk-of-disability-and-death-228832111.html

Nov. 16, 2013

The baby in Arkansas seems healthy at birth. Warm, fuzzy skin. A normal weight. But Aiden Cooper can't keep down formula.

Don't worry, he's fine, doctors assure his mother as they leave the hospital. You're just a first-time mom.

Aiden goes home and sleeps in a bassinet beside his mother's bed. Soon his stomach becomes swollen, bulging with veins. He breaks out in a rash. He is limp, pale, won't eat.

In North Carolina, a baby is born with chubby cheeks and the same button-nose as his big brother. At 11 days old, Garrett Saine turns gray, stops breathing, then turns blue.

Blood pours from the nose and mouth of a newborn boy in Wisconsin. A baby girl in Indiana has seizures, then quits breathing.

In each instance, doctors frantically try to figure out why the baby is so sick. Routine blood samples taken shortly after birth have the answers. But the samples haven't been tested.

They should have been sent to a lab within 24 hours to be screened for disorders that can often be treated if caught early. But they weren't. Instead, samples sit at hospitals for a few days. A week. Some samples are lost.

Nearly every baby born in the United States has blood collected within a day or two of birth to be screened for dozens of genetic disorders. The entire premise of newborn screening is to detect disorders quickly so babies can be treated early, averting death and preventing or limiting brain damage, disability and a lifetime of costly medical care.

Yet one of newborn screening's most important metrics — speed — is ignored for tens of thousands of babies' tests each year, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis of nearly 3 million screening tests shows.

In Arkansas, it took 3½ weeks for Aiden's blood sample to be tested. Infection raged through his tiny body as he lay in neonatal intensive care in Little Rock.

<snip> ... the entire article is well worth reading.

Especially if you are planning to give birth to a child soon, anywhere in the United States.

Some people think that "babies" are only "murdered" by abortion ... but babies are killed by failures in the system that could be easily addressed.

I want to know when the so-called "pro-life" people will start protesting the incompetence at these hospitals that kills and injures actual babies, and leaves families devastated and with huge medical bills and possibly a brain-damaged child to support for life.