(Press-News.org) Undocumented women in Finland access pregnancy care later than others. Yet, screening of infectious diseases at the early stages of pregnancy would be particularly important to these women, a new study carried out in Helsinki, Finland, shows. Conducted by the University of Eastern Finland and the University of Helsinki, the study on undocumented women's pregnancy care and childbirth was published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth.
Undocumented pregnant women constitute a vulnerable group of people who lack equal access to pregnancy care. Previous research has shown that undocumented migrants encounter difficulties in accessing health services, the onset of their prenatal care is delayed, and women have an increased risk for infectious diseases. Yet, with continuous prenatal care throughout pregnancy, it is possible to prevent pregnancy complications and arrange proper medical care and guidance when needed.
The new study examined the outcomes of pregnancy and childbirth of undocumented women attending the public maternity care in Helsinki, Finland, in 2014-2018. The study population consisted of 62 individual pregnancies. The majority, 61%, of undocumented women gained or sought access to pregnancy care only during their second or third pregnancy trimester. For the majority, 71%, pregnancy care was inadequate. Undocumented women had an average of five prenatal care visits, whereas other women had an average of 13 visits. In Finland, the national recommendation is 8-10 prenatal care visits during pregnancy.
Screening for infectious diseases during pregnancy was fairly successful in Helsinki. Almost all undocumented pregnant women were screened for HIV, hepatitis B, and syphilis. However, 57% of women were not screened for hepatitis C antibodies as recommended. HIV and hepatitis B were more common among undocumented pregnant women than other women in Finland.
"It would be very important to screen all undocumented women for infections at the early stages of pregnancy, so that possible antiviral medication can be initiated in time to prevent mother-to-child-transmission. This would be best safeguarded by guaranteeing undocumented people a legal right to health care," Infectious Diseases Physician Ville Holmberg says.
In Finland, undocumented people do not have a statutory right to health care and, consequently, to pregnancy care. However, Helsinki and a few other Finnish municipalities are providing undocumented women access to pregnancy care.
"We also need new innovative ways of promoting undocumented women's seeking of, and access to, care. Information should be made available extensively and not only in different languages, but also in plain language. Health care professionals should be provided with up-to-date information on the types of services available to undocumented women and children, and on the special characteristics associated with the treatment of undocumented people," Midwife Janita Tasa, MHS, says.
"By providing timely and adequate prenatal care to undocumented women, we can prevent pregnancy complications and the transmission of infectious diseases from mothers to children. Timely care is equitable, and it also reduces the costs of health care," Tasa says.
"Overall, the service users of Finnish maternity care are changing, as families with immigrant backgrounds are a rapidly growing group. So far however, we have very little research evidence on the impact of this change on traditional maternity care," says Professor Katri Vehviläinen-Julkunen.
INFORMATION:
For further information, please contact:
Janita Tasa, Midwife, Master of Health Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, tel. +358445577515, janitatasa@gmail.com
Ville Holmberg, Infectious Diseases Physician, University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Hospital, tel. +358 50 4271630, ville.holmberg@hus.fi
Katri Vehviläinen-Julkunen, Professor, University of Eastern Finland, tel. +358 50 338 1957, katri.vehvilainenjulkunen@uef.fi
Research article:
Maternal health care utilization and the obstetric outcomes of undocumented women in Finland - a retrospective register-based study. Tasa J, Holmberg V, Sainio S, Kankkunen P & Vehviläinen-Julkunen K. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth 21, 191 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-021-03642-7
Study finds that children who experienced housing loss in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake are more inclined to opt for short-term gratification
Tokyo - Living through a tragic event might make us more inclined to live for the moment, but not always in a good way. Research is looking into the psychological after-effects among children who survived the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, and a recent study may have made a connection: the children may forgo greater long-term reward for short-term pleasure.
Among the traumatic experiences in the quake and subsequent tsunami that killed almost 16,000 people, some survivors witnessed people washed ...
In their pursuit of maximum reward, people suffering from gambling disorder rely less on exploring new but potentially better strategies, and more on proven courses of action that have already led to success in the past. The neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain may play an important role in this, a study in biological psychology conducted at the University of Cologne's Faculty of Human Sciences by Professor Dr Jan Peters und Dr Antonius Wiehler suspects. The article 'Attenuated directed exploration during reinforcement learning in gambling disorder' has appeared in the latest edition of the Journal of Neuroscience, published ...
In cancer immunotherapy, cells in the patient's own immune system are activated to attack cancer cells. CAR T cell therapy has been one of the most significant recent advances in immunotherapies targeted at cancer.
In CAR T cell therapy, T cells are extracted from the patient for genetic modification: a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) is transported into the cells using a viral vector, helping the T cells better identify and kill cancer cells. When the antigen receptor cells identify the desired surface structure in the patient's cells, they start multiplying and killing the target cells.
CAR T cell therapy was introduced to Finland in 2018, and the treatment form has been used in support of patients suffering from leukaemia and lymphomas.
So ...
A Delphi survey carried out by Dr Lyn Robinson, Head of Department and Reader in Library and Information Science at City, University of London, and Dr David Haynes, former Visiting Lecturer and Post-Doctoral Fellow in City's Department of Library and Information Science, has revealed priorities for protecting personal privacy online.
Their research study, "Delphi study of risk to individuals who disclose personal information online", published in the Journal of Information Science, was conducted at City in 2019, and is based on the views of a panel of privacy and information security experts.
A literature review, published between 2014 and ...
For years, in the vastness of our galaxy, astrophysicists have been tracking down pevatrons - natural accelerators of particles with monstrous energies. Thanks to the HAWC Observatory for Cosmic Radiation, another probable trace of their existence has just been found: photons with some of the highest energies. However, what is particularly important is that this time the high-energy photons have not only been recorded, but also their probable place of origin has been determined.
We know they exist, we just don't know where exactly they are or what they look like. Pevatrons - because this is what we are talking ...
Marine heatwaves are dramatically affecting the marine ecosystems of the world and the Mediterranean is no exception. In the Mediterranean, these extreme climate episodes and its resulting massive mortality of species are getting more and more intense and frequent. To date, most of the studies analysed the effects of these perturbations on specific species and populations, although researchers still do not know how this affects the functioning of the involved ecosystems.
A new study led by the University of Barcelona (UB) and the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) has stated that marine heatwaves are having a strong impact on the functioning of coraligen, one of the most emblematic ...
A new study comparing decades of environmental monitoring records has confirmed that Canada's caribou are not faring as well as other animals like moose and wolves in the same areas--and also teased out why.
The study used 16 years of data to examine changes in vegetation, moose, wolves and caribou.
"Caribou are declining across Canada and have been recently lost in the Lower 48 States," says Melanie Dickie, a doctoral student with UBC Okanagan's Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science.
"Understanding why caribou are declining is the first step to effectively managing the species--it tells ...
Native reptile populations on Christmas Island have been in severe decline with two species, Lister's gecko and the blue-tailed skink, entirely disappearing from the wild. While previously the main driver for this decline is likely predation by invasive species and habitat destruction, a silent killer is now threatening to wipe the species out entirely.
Those bred in captivity on the Australian Territory in the Indian Ocean have also been mysteriously dying, leaving the two species - which number only around 1000 each - in danger of extinction. Veterinary scientists from the University of Sydney, the Australian Registry of Wildlife ...
A radio telescope located in outback Western Australia has observed a cosmic phenomenon with a striking resemblance to a jellyfish.
Published today in The Astrophysical Journal, an Australian-Italian team used the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope to observe a cluster of galaxies known as Abell 2877.
Lead author and PhD candidate Torrance Hodgson, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Perth, said the team observed the cluster for 12 hours at five radio frequencies between 87.5 and 215.5 megahertz.
"We looked at the data, and as we turned down the frequency, we saw a ghostly jellyfish-like ...
The research team led by Prof. YANG Lihua from Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, School of Chemistry and Materials Science of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences proposed nanomicelles composed solely of macromolecules as a new approach for treating pancreatic tumor. The study was published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
Host dense peptides (HDP) is a part of the innate immunity of eukaryotic organism. It helps the host fence back attack by microbes through disrupting cellular membrane integrity. Inspired by HDP, membrane-disruptive macromolecules are designed with two most HDP's common structural characteristics (cationic and amphipathic) to realize similar membrane-disrupting ...
