An article that I recently read discussed the issue of drug addiction in newborns. More specifically, this article talked about babies that were born addicted to pain killers. Babies that undergo withdrawal are prone to feeding problems, vomiting, diarrhea, tremors and even seizures. This issue is becoming more and more prevalent in the health world today. According to the article, form 2003 to 2008, the number of babies diagnosed with withdrawal more than doubled. Florida even recorded lower birth rates over the last five years, yet the number of babies treated for withdrawal tripled. Doctors used to be baffled at the proper treatment because this used to be such an uncommon occurrence. Now however, there are guidelines and protocols specifically for infant withdrawal because they see cases practically every day.
Unfortunately, there are few treatment clinics and programs offered to pregnant women who are addicted to pain killers. Therefore, there is little hope that the babies will avoid addiction as well. This shows that although there is increased protocol for treatment, little has been done to address this issue as a public health problem, or study its causes. Something needs to be done at the preventative level in order to help these drug addicted mothers stop the passing of addiction onto their newborns. But what exactly does that prevention entail? This issue is so new, or rather becoming more prevalent just recently, that possible preventions are yet to be discovered or attempted.
I think that this article is a fantastic example of the research opportunities that are made available by public health. This requires the work of all the sub-fields. For example, bio statisticians can focus on gaining more concrete data. Environmental health specialists and behavioral scientists can attempt to identify the major causes and make drug addiction programs more available. Since new issues such as infant addiction are arising daily, it is necessary for public health specialists to be constantly aware. This just proves that there are new health issues presented every day around the world—issues that we know very little, or nothing about. The possibility for discovery is seemingly endless as situations change and time moves on. As of now, doctors are very uncertain of the future for these newborns. I think as people interested in public health, we take this as an invitation, a challenge to discover something truly beneficial.
This is a very interesting problem that is now facing us and it is a classic example of how public health problems like this arise. Instead of finding ways to prevent addiction in newborns immediately, all the effort went to treatment after the fact, which is also important. Shouldn't there be a joint effort going on though. Why does the focus shift to prevention only after the problem has been allowed to become very severe?
ReplyDeleteI think an important step in solving this issue is finding the women that are pregnant and have an addiction and giving them as many resources as possible. Not every woman would take advantage of them but many would because almost every single mother wants to have a healthy baby. Educating the mothers of the consequences of their newborn being born addicted and giving them support groups may be the first steps. This also provides an opportunity for mothers to become clean and break their addiction as well.
This I think provides a very real example of why it is frustrating that public health does not receive the widescale attention that is needed! This issue is central to the next generation that we are trying to bring into our human community and issues like this are very rarely noticed by the general public!
ReplyDeleteI think a crucial step in taking steps towards solving this issue lies in identifying which mothers are becoming addicted to the pain killers. Is it a specific type of ethnicity, a population, or a wide array of women that are experiencing these addictions? If it is indeed a wide array of women, then is it an issue regarding the fact that pain medications are made to readily available at our pharmacies? Is it that women that go to the doctor for pain should be given alternative treatments? Should we focus on alternative medicine in a much heavier way seeing how detrimental these medicines can be in a variety of ways?