World Immunization Week, what can we do?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) immunization currently averts an estimated 2 to 3 million deaths every year. It is one of the most successful and cost-effective health interventions. The immunization protects against previously common and epidemic infectious diseases such as diphtheria, measles, whooping cough, pneumonia, polio, rubella and tetanus. However, an estimated 22 million infants worldwide are still missing out on basic vaccines. This could be due to limited resources including limited funds, competing health priorities as some nations have more urgent health issues to deal with including but not limited to malnutrition, this could also be due to poor management of health systems; and inadequate monitoring and supervision.

This should not let us forget the personal responsibility: some people refuse vaccination based on lack of knowledge of its importance, some due to false beliefs even if it was available and freely offered. It is the duty of the governments and the health officials to advice people on the importance of vaccination, that it not only protects their children, but the entire society from possibly deadly outbreaks.

Let us stand hand in hand and support vaccinating our kids, inform the society about the vaccine benefits and when possible try to deflate false information. The web including the social media is a very vital place where information can be quickly disseminated; let us try to share the correct message with the world. Let us protect our children.

Protect your world – get vaccinated 

Does your body Mass Index (BMI) before pregnancy affect your child’s?

In a study published in April 2013 in PLoS ONE journal, a team from the Chinese Nanjing Medical University found a direct correlation between mother’s pre-pregnancy weight and her child’s. That’s to say, overweight or obese mothers tend to have overweight or large children while underweight mothers tend to have underweight or small children.

These results were based on a systematic literature review, where the authors collected 45 studies concerned with maternal BMI [weight (Kg)/height (m²)] and their baby’s weight and size. They later on combined the results these studies provided to get an overall estimation. They suggested that these results can be due to “programming” the fetus in the womb to the amount of food available, this programming can affect the physiology of the infant or his/her metabolism, even could some genetic changes to how the body can process and use food. These results are, of course, not absolute: age of the mother could affect the infant’s weight and size, her ethnicity, genetics, having some diseases such as pregnancy or diabetes among many other factors. However, they are still of very high value: with the obesity epidemic we are all aware of, how will that affect future generations? Will it be even worse? The authors suggested that trying to correct the mother’s weight before or during pregnancy could help control the infant’s weight: what measures are they proposing? What is the chance of succeeding? And what are the implications of such success?

One last question to address:  have they in the pooled studies checked the effect of pre-pregnancy weight of the same woman during prior or subsequent pregnancies and that of the kids?

Citation: Yu Z, Han S, Zhu J, Sun X, Ji C, et al. (2013) Pre-Pregnancy Body Mass Index in Relation to Infant Birth Weight and Offspring Overweight/Obesity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. PLoS ONE 8(4): e61627. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0061627

Abstract from PubMd

Calculating adult BMI

 

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