Fetal Alcohol Children Need More Help
Medical
researchers at the University of Manitoba are calling on governments to
boost
the financial support given to the growing numbers of children who are
being
born with Fetal Alcohol
Spectrum Disorder (FASD), Canadian Press
reported last week.
The study
notes that children with FASD – permanent brain damage suffered in the
womb as
a result of the mother drinking alcohol – often end up spending much of
their
youth in foster care. The researchers put the onus on the provinces to
try to
prepare them to live independently as adults.
“Most people
at age 18 aren’t ready to go out and be independent, and children with
developmental disabilities . . . need additional support,” social work
professor Don Fuchs
told CP.
The same
group of researchers had estimated in a previous study that 17 per cent
of the
children in Manitoba’s child welfare system have FASD.
What is
needed, Fuchs believes, is a heightened awareness of the need for women
to
abstain from alcohol while pregnant. “If you look at how the smoking
cessation
[programs] have broadened out, that’s the kind of range of
interventions that
are going to be needed to have an effect,” he said.
Toronto-based
pediatric toxicologist Dr. Gideon Koren,
for one, has no patience with fellow physicians who assure their female
patients that there is no danger to their unborn babies if they choose
to drink
“in moderation” while pregnant.
“I’m afraid
to tell you it happens now as we talk,” Koren told the Winnipeg
Free Press.
“We’ve published several
papers that show that it’s not uncommon for physicians
to still tell women it’s still OK to drink moderately.”
The report
was released at the eighth annual Fetal Alcohol Canadian Expertise
Research
Roundtable, a one-day conference held recently in Winnipeg.
During the
conference, as the Winnipeg Sun
reported, participants were told of the launch of the Canadian Foundation on Fetal Alcohol
Research,
the first of its kind in the world.
“This will ensure that researchers,
especially young
researchers, have the resources and support they need,” said Dr. Louise Nadeau,
a professor at the University of Montreal who also chairs the
foundation’s
first board.
