Also in your health, an exchange program through
Hartford HealthCare now has more knowledge
on the growing use of opioids and their impact
on child birth.
Here to tell us more is a member of that team,
Kate Sims.
It's great to have you with us.
Great to be here.
Thank you.
You took this trip and what did you discover?
So we took a trip to South Africa.
It's actually a vocational training team that
we do with the Rotary.
We together - there are five of us.
Two doctors, someone from DCF and DMHAS to
really look at the effects of fetal alcohol
syndrome during pregnancy.
As we know, in South Africa, they have a much
more devastating problem than we do because
their history was about paying farm workers
in alcohol.
So they have a significant issue with fetal
alcohol spectrum disorder, which are emotional
and physical ailments from drinking alcohol
during pregnancy.
So what did the research bear out?
What it showed us for the United States is
that we don't do enough research on alcohol.
What we do know is that alcohol is the first
pathway to drug addiction.
But we don't do enough research on that.
We don't test for alcohol during pregnancy.
We don't research during pregnancy.
So South Africa is ahead of us from a research
perspective.
And because they are much further, what impact
does that have?
Unfortunately, their poverty is something
like we've never seen.
So their poverty hinders them from making
progress in this area.
What we took home is that knowledge base that
we have to pay more attention.
Our OBs are going to look at more testing,
more research and really the significance
of making sure that we tell everyone no alcohol
during pregnancy.
If we do that, that's going to make a huge
impact for us in the United States.
Absolutely.
Huge awareness is that no amount of alcohol
is good during pregnancy.
There used to be, you know, have a glass of
wine or red wine, but today is absolutely
no alcohol.
There are different factors during your nine
months of pregnancy that alcohol can effect
something different during each one of those
stages.
We learned so much valuable information while
we were there.
So now you have to educate everybody else
about this.
It's not something we've heard before - well,
we have, but not quite to this extent.
Correct.
We pay attention to pre-natal abstinence syndrome,
which is really about drugs during pregnancy,
but we really don't ask a lot of questions
about alcohol during pregnancy.
It's a huge awareness for us looking forward
and much more work to do in that area.
What impact does it have on the baby if the
mother has too much alcohol.
There's different stages, right?
So fetal alcohol spectrum disorder can be
anything from a slightly emotional to physical
disorders.
It can be cleft lip.
It can be facial disorders.
Mental disorders.
When we were in South Africa, we've seen a
little bit to a major amount of effects.
Much more than we see here in America.
Again, because of their issues with alcohol.
They see many more defects than we do.
Kate Sims, thanks so much for raising awareness.
We appreciate it.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
