Women of child-bearing age urged to be immunised

Apr 01, 2017 News

-or risk giving birth to children with hearing loss, other defects
Expectant mothers and women of child-bearing age are encouraged to ensure that they receive all necessary vaccinations. This is especially important since it could determine the wellbeing of their offspring.
This disclosure was recently made by Dr. Luqman Lamal as he also emphasised the importance of antenatal care in order to increase the probability of a woman giving birth to an all-round healthy baby.
Dr. Lamal is the Director of Global Health and Research of the United States-based Starkey Hearing Foundation. The Foundation is one that helps to fight the challenge of hearing loss by providing hearing aids to those persons in need around the world.
The company recently started to offer its service here too, through its collaboration with the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation and the Office of the First Lady, Ms. Sandra Granger.
He, however, noted that there are a number of reasons that could lead to persons developing hearing loss.
Among the common causes found in developing countries such as Guyana, according to Dr. Lawal, is otitis media. Otitis media is a middle ear infection which can be triggered by a number of different practices some of which could be cultural.
“People sometimes insert different materials into their ears…they may put oil, they may put some object in them, and things like these can predispose them to ear infection,” Dr. Lawal explained.
Given the circumstances that can lend to such issues Dr. Lawal said “definitely once you feel you have pain [in your ears] or you feel you have some kind of discharge [from them] you need to go see your doctor so that they can find a solution to the problem.”
Another problem amplified by Dr. Lawal that has been associated with hearing loss, is meningitis. According to research, certain infections can cause hearing loss at any age—and one of the most common culprits is bacterial meningitis. It is thought that over 30 percent of bacterial meningitis cases result in some degree of hearing loss-from mild impairment to profound deafness.
But Dr. Lawal has noted that among the other troubling causes of hearing loss is the fact that some children are hearing impaired from birth and sometimes it is linked to maternal diseases. “What happens is that some patients, their moms, suffer from maternal diseases like maternal rubella, maternal cytomegalovirus and other infections during pregnancy…So when you have these kind of infections in pregnancy and you don’t receive the normal antenatal care, then your children are predisposed to some conditions, including hearing loss,” Dr. Lawal said.
For this reason, he noted that “we are advocating to the expectant mothers of Guyana, the young ladies of Guyana who are still of the age to give birth to always seek antenatal care to ensure that they get right antenatal care.”
He continued by emphasizing that “The large population of low and middle income countries have patients that have hearing loss from lack of vaccination or lack of antenatal care.”
Dr. Lawal earlier this week was part of a screening outreach that was designed to determine the level of hearing loss of patients.
He, however, disclosed that sometimes the remedy to some patients’ hearing loss is simply cleaning the ears. “Sometimes once you clean your ears you find there is no need for hearing aids,” said Dr. Lawal.

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