The Impact Of Nuclear Disasters On Reproductive Health

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Apr 272011
 

As has been pointed out on this blog numerous times, in the aftermath of environmental disasters, there are gender-specific impacts that need to be addressed.  This is especially true in a nuclear disaster such as the one that occurred in Japan in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami.  As IPS reports,

Women of reproductive age are at significant risk from the effects of radiation on their bodies and reproductive systems. Studies show women’s exposure to radiation may harm her future ability to bear children and can cause premature aging. The U.S. Center for Disease Control warns pregnant women that, in the event of exposure to radiation, even at low doses, the health consequences for unborn foetuses “can include stunted growth, deformities, abnormal brain function, or cancer that may develop sometime later in life…

…In the two decades after Chernobyl, approximately 200,000 people died. Women living in highly contaminated areas in Ukraine and Belarus were affected by chromosome disorders, leukaemia, psychological trauma, depression, and multiple birth defects in their children. Among women who lived in the affected area, medical studies detected high levels of thyroid and breast cancer. Unfortunately, the former Soviet Union failed to provide timely and continuous information about the effects of radiation on human health.

In light of the unique risk to women’s health caused by exposure to radiation, the Japanese government and international agencies must take immediate action. Yet neither the World Health Organisation nor the International Atomic Energy Association – the two international bodies that monitor health and nuclear security respectively – have provided any information about the effect of radiation exposure to women’s bodies. Even a simple google search on the impact of radiation on women does not yield much, nor are there steps that women can take to mitigate the impact on her health and her children.

At the very least, pregnant women and women of childbearing age should be offered the opportunity for counseling about the risks and given the opportunity to access food and water that is radiation-free.  But as IPS points out, for those already exposed, the damage is done and cannot be reversed and the result is that there will be many miscarriages and children born with birth defects.

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As I write this, I note that the radiation readings at the Fukushima nuclear power plant are the highest they have been since the earthquake and tsunami struck, a start indication that this the magnitude of this crisis is not in any way decreasing and in all likelihood, will get worse.  Think it can’t happen in the U.S.?  The Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Ohio had to be shut down after abnormally high readings last week.

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 Posted by Fempeace on April 27, 2011

Tell The FDA To Adhere To Court Order Ending Age Restrictions On Emergency Contraception

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Nov 172010
 

The Center for Reproductive Rights is taking the FDA back to court, 

for ignoring a March 2009 court order to end age restrictions on emergency contraception.

The FDA is not above the law and should have to follow a court order (not to mention overwhelming scientific evidence) just like everyone else. We hope you’ll share this case with your readers and encourage them to take action against the FDA with us.

The restrictions were originally put in place during the Bush administration because they didn’t want young women to have access to EC. Medical and scientific consensus provides no rationale for age restrictions on EC, and a court ruled in the Center’s favor in 2009 and ordered the FDA to reconsider its policy.

The judge trusted that the Obama administration would do the right thing and reverse course, but fast forward a year and a half and the FDA continues to make excuses. What’s worse is that at the start of his administration, President Obama declared that politics would no longer play a role in U.S. science policy, stating, “we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”

The Center first sued the FDA in 2005, and even a 2009 victory  hasn’t driven the message home to the White House that women of all ages deserve quick, safe access to emergency contraception

Take Action and send a message to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg.  And since you absolutely shouldn’t have a conversation about contraception without bunnies, enjoy:

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 Posted by Fempeace on November 17, 2010

13%–Why Providing Safe Abortions Is A Necessary Part Of Ending Maternal Mortality

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Sep 162010
 

Every now and again, I get in a mathematical frame of mind.  So today I offer you this math problem:

(.13 x 1,000) x 365 = ?

I’ll give y’all a few minutes to get out those calculators…okay times up.  Everyone come up with 47,450?

Now let’s talk about what that number is.  Every day, 1000 women fall victim to maternal mortality, about 365,000 women per year (although some put that figure higher, nearer 500,000/yr.). Almost all of those deaths are preventable.

According to the United Nations, there are three things we could be doing to stop maternal mortality, they are:

1. Strengthening health systems

Women are more than just mothers, and improving the health care they receive throughout their lives improves their health as mothers, too.

It doesn’t get donor support because compared to targeting a specific disease, health system strengthening is not as sexy. (And takes a while to explain.)  Improving the Ministry of Health’s ability to allocated health care funds is nowhere near as photogenic as distributing prenatal vitamins.

2. Improving access to safe abortion

Unsafe abortion accounts for 13% of maternal deaths. When you add that to the number of women who die giving birth to unwanted pregnancies, it becomes clear that access to safe abortion would radically improve the health of mothers.

Access to safe abortions doesn’t get funded because abortion is incredibly controversial, and no donor will be associated with it.

3. Supporting access to contraception

It’s safer not to be pregnant than it is to be pregnant. Across the board, in all circumstances. You know what helps with that? Contraceptives.  Yet 200 million women around the world want to control their family size and have no access to contraception.

Contraception does get donor support, but it’s hard to improve access because there are so many barriers. The barrier might be access to a health care provider, money, or a whole pile of other things. For example, even if a woman can easily get free contraception from a provider, she may not be allowed to use it by a husband or mother-in-law. Use of contraception is tied to women’s roles in society, and that doesn’t change overnight.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that 13% might not sound like all that big a number but it translates to 47,450 women  dead every year because we can not get our collective act together to provide them a safe way to end their pregnancies.  We need  to quit thinking of abortion as something that is too controversial to be included in discussions of how to provide global reproductive health.  The truth is that it is essential and tens of thousands of women are dying every year because we refuse to accept that truth and it is time, once and for all, for that to stop.  Learn more about Millennium Goal 5, Improving Maternal Health here.

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 Posted by Fempeace on September 16, 2010

Tubal Ligation In The Aftermath Of Pakistani Flood

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Sep 152010
 

As we have already highlighted several times on the Feminist Peace Network blog, maternal health care in the aftermath of the Pakistani flooding is a huge concern with estimates of some 500,000 pregnant women being impacted by the disaster.  However, the wording in this article is disturbing:

(Dr Nighat) Shah, (secretary-general of the Society of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, Pakistan (SOGP)) says that at the very least, with many of the camps now being visited by health professionals, women there are benefiting from reproductive-health information that they would have otherwise missed. This, says the doctor, may help the women break free from what she calls the “death trap” of frequent pregnancies.

Now, says Shah, “We can provide them the much-needed family planning services”.

(Dr. Azra) Ahsan (of the National Committee for Maternal Neonatal and Child Health (NCMNH))  herself notes that with only 22 percent of married Pakistani women using a modern family-planning method, this may be an “opportune time” to introduce the intrauterine contraceptive device (IUCD) to the women in the camps.

She does not think pills would be a successful intervention, reasoning, “They will either forget to take it, or when the dose finishes they may discontinue (taking it).”

Shah favours tubal ligation for those who already have more than three or four children. She even suggests offering counseling to women who come to deliver their babies at hospitals, and encouraging them to opt for ligation after their family is “complete”.

“When they return home,” says Shah, “their lives will hopefully be better off if such interventions are made.”

So because these women’s lives have been decimated by flooding, sterilization should be suggested?  Aside from that smacking of sounding like population control, not maternal health care, many of these women have been displaced, their homes destroyed, they are living in refugee camps in very difficult conditions and it is being suggested that in addition to recovering from childbirth they are being asked to consider undergoing and recovering from elective surgery?  The implications of this report are disturbing and should be investigated.

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 Posted by Fempeace on September 15, 2010

Faulty Assumptions In Assessing Impact Of Gulf Contamination Put Children At Particular Risk

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Aug 242010
 

Despite  the official spill over mantra regarding the BP Gulf oil disaster, it is becoming abundantly clear that it is anything but over as more and more evidence mounts of oxygen dead zones, oil and dispersant in seafood and the chemical stench and oil residue that is still painfully visible along and in the gulf.  Not only is the damage to the environment ongoing, but the full impact on human health will be unknown for years.  However, there is every reason to be very concerned, particularly for our most vulnerable populations including pregnant women and children (something I pointed out back in early June).   Dr. Gina Solomon of the NRDC explains further why this is so crucially important and why we need to change our assumptions about how we view this problem:

The FDA used faulty assumptions (described below) to determine how much contamination is OK to eat in Gulf seafood. This means that they set the bar too high and lower levels of contaminants could pose a risk to vulnerable populations – like pregnant women, children and communities who eat a lot of Gulf seafood.

  • By using an adult average body weight of 176 pounds the FDA does not adequately protect children, or even many women

The average body weight of a 4-6 year old child is about 47 pounds and half of American women weigh less than about 155 pounds. These smaller people would be getting a bigger dose of contaminants per pound of bodyweight than the FDA is estimating they’re getting. Not all of us are big men, after all.

  • FDA fails to account for the increased vulnerability of the developing fetus and young children

Children are particularly vulnerable to contaminants in seafood because their bodies are still developing, they ingest a larger portion of contaminants relative to their size, and they often don’t process chemicals as well as adults.  Human epidemiologic studies have found that fetuses can’t clear the genetic damage from PAHs as easily, and also that babies may be at increased risk of neurological effects from these chemicals.

There is nothing new in this one size fits all approach to measuring human impact.  For years Reference Man, who was

was born in 1974, but he remains perpetually between 20 and 30 years old. He stands 5 feet seven inches (170 cm), weighs 154 pounds (70 kilograms) and is a Caucasian from Western Europe or North America.

was used to assess the impact of X-rays on the human body.  It apparently didn’t occur to researchers that what was good  for Reference Man might be lethal to women or children.  It is unfortunate to see that ignorance once again playing out in data assumptions about the gulf.

In addition to Solomon’s blog, to fully understand what is happening in the Gulf, I highly recommend the ongoing coverage by Alexander Higgins Blog, this article on Sign of the Times and BP Oil Slick and Mother Jones’ Mac McClelland, Kate Sheppard and Julia Whitty.

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 Posted by Fempeace on August 24, 2010
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