Pregnancy

Children born to mothers who contract COVID-19 during pregnancy may be more likely to develop obesity, according to a new study. More than 100 million COVID-19 cases have been reported in the United States since 2019, and there is limited information on the long-term health effects of the infection. Pregnant women make up 9 per cent of reproductive-aged women with COVID-19, which exposes millions of babies to maternal infection during foetal development over the next five years. Our findings suggest that children exposed in utero to maternal COVID-19 have an altered growth pattern in early life that may increase their risk of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease over time, said Lindsay T Fourman, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass. There is still a lot of research needed to understand the effects of COVID-19 on pregnant women and their children, she said. The researchers studied 150 infants born to mothers who had COVID-19 during pregnancy and found the

A recent study on the level of awareness of medical termination of pregnancy has claimed that one of every three women it interviewed did not consider abortion as a health right or were unsure of it. The survey by the NGO Foundation for Reproductive Health Services India (FRHS India) also claimed 32 per cent of respondents were unaware of abortion as a legal right and that 95.5 per cent of Indian women were uninformed of the existence of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (Amendment) Act, 2021. FRHS India, which provides clinical family planning services in the country, recently released the findings of its study on the level of awareness of the MTP Act and practices related to safe abortion. The study was conducted by the FRHS in Delhi, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. "The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act was modified 1.5 years ago but abortion-seekers are still unaware of the changes brought about in the Act. We found that even service providers (doctors) in ...

Pregnant women with Covid-19 infection face a seven times increased risk of dying and a significantly elevated risk of being admitted to an ICU or suffering from pneumonia, a new study has shown

COVID-19 drove a dramatic increase in the number of women who died from pregnancy or childbirth complications in the US last year, a crisis that has disproportionately claimed Black and Hispanic women as victims, according to a report. The report released on Wednesday lays out grim trends across the country for expectant mothers and their newborn babies. It finds that pregnancy-related deaths have spiked nearly 80 per cent since 2018, with COVID-19 being a factor in a quarter of the 1,178 deaths reported last year. The percentage of preterm and low birthweight babies also went up last year, after holding steady for years. And more pregnant or postpartum women are reporting symptoms of depression. We were already in the middle of a crisis with maternal mortality in our country, said Karen Tabb Dina, a maternal health researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This really shows that COVID-19 has exacerbated that crisis to rates that we, as a country, are not able t

According to a 34-year-old woman on Reddit, the watch indicated that her average resting heart rate had significantly increased in just a few days, which made her suspect that something was off

The Supreme Court of India recently ruled that all women, irrespective of their marital status, are entitled to legal abortion as permitted under Medical Termination of Pregnancy rules. Here's more

The court also for the first time recognised marital rape under the MTP Act

The Court ruled that the exclusion of unmarried women who conceive out of live-in relationships from the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Rules is unconstitutional

Four out of five pregnancy-related deaths in the US are preventable, according to a new report published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

The West Bengal government in collaboration with UNICEF will form child-friendly sanghas' (clusters), comprising members of self-help groups, to curb child marriage and teenage pregnancy in the state, which is the highest in the country. To stop these twin menaces, the state government and UNICEF have planned, as a pilot project, to form 110 child-friendly sanghas' in the next six months in 87 blocks in all 23 districts of the state, a UNICEF release said here. "This initiative is aimed at addressing the issues that affect the lives of SHG members and their family members," Vibhu Goel, State Mission Director and CEO of West Bengal State Rural Livelihood Mission (SRLM), said at the end of a validation workshop held here on Friday. West Bengal is at the top in cases of child marriage and teenage pregnancy, according to a National Family Health Survey report. As per the data available, after the National Family Health Survey-5 was conducted in 2019-20, a total 41.6 per cent of women a

Research led by Caroline Crowther of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and a team, the findings were published in the journal PLOS Medicine

The Delhi High Court has refused to allow an unmarried woman to undergo medical termination of pregnancy at 23 weeks, observing it is not permitted under the abortion law

The court, in a 6-3 ruling powered by its conservative majority, upheld a Republican-backed Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks.

This retrograde clause is highly discriminatory to women, the AIDWA said in its statement

The number and rate of US abortions increased from 2017 to 2020 after a long decline, data stated

As China faces a scenario of negative population growth, the government has started to force its citizens to marry early and have at least three children each.

The TFR ranges from 1.1 children per woman in Sikkim to 3 children per woman in Bihar

The Madras High Court has allowed the abortion of the six-month pregnancy of a 17-year old girl who was sexually assaulted by a 44-year old man

Pregnant women with COVID-19 are more likely to have complications with pregnancy and birth compared to those without the nfection, according to a study. The research, publishing on Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine, looked at hospitalisation for births in France during the first six months of the pandemic. The study suggests that vaccination may be useful to protect women and their babies, particularly for those at a higher risk of developing severe COVID-19 infections. The researchers from the Universite de Paris in France analysed data for hospitalisations for birth after 22 weeks gestation in France between January and June 2020. Until March 15, all confirmed cases of COVID were hospitalised but after this hospital admission was based on the medical condition of the patient, they said. The researchers noted that of 244,465 births in hospital, 874 or 0.36 per cent of mothers had been diagnosed with COVID-19. Women in the COVID-19 group were more likely to be older, have obe

The rate of miscarriage was roughly the same between the vaccine and placebo groups