PREGNANT mums who won't quit
drinking are giving birth to brain-damaged babies who develop learning and
social disorders.
Experts say, despite health
warnings, one in five women continues to drink during pregnancy and hundreds of
babies are born each year with undiagnosed brain impairment.
The Foundation for Alcohol
Research and Education has have drawn up a $37 million management plan to
tackle foetal alcohol problems, which they will present to the Federal
Government today.
They want to spend more than $10
million on a campaign to drive home the message that women who drink while
pregnant can cause brain damage in their unborn babies
They also want to set up three
diagnostic clinics across Australia and a series of research programs. Researchers
say Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder is the most common preventable cause of
intellectual impairment in Australia.
But it usually goes unreported,
there is no funding to deal with its consequences and only 20 per cent of
doctors can identify it when they see it. At the severe end of the spectrum,
babies with FASD have distinct facial markers and brain abnormalities. At the
other end they have behavioural and brain function problems including poor
memory, language and social skills.
Recent research showed almost
half of all pregnant women drank before knowing they were pregnant and 19.5 per
cent continued to drink alcohol once they became aware of their pregnancy,
despite national health guidelines advising them not to. University of Sydney
Professor Elizabeth Elliott said most doctors couldn't identify FASD and many
cases were misdiagnosed as ADHD or autism because they had similar symptoms.
Conservative estimates suggest
200 children a year are born with alcohol damage.
Alcohol manufacturers have
agreed to introduce pregnancy warnings on bottles ahead of compulsory labelling
in two years time.
However, an independent audit of
the alcohol industry's DrinkWise campaign found that a full year after the
initiative was launched, less than one in six alcohol products carried the
consumer messages.
News.com
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