At 12.01 am Port-of-Spain General Hospital registered the country’s first Christmas Day birth. A little girl, weighing just 6.3 lbs was born to 23-year-old Ornella Farrell. The happy mother was thrilled by the news that she was the first to give birth on the special day.
Less than an hour later, the hospital registered the second birth for the day, this time a baby boy born to Samantha Periera and weighing 7.07 lbs.
At Mt Hope Medical Sciences Complex, 19-year-old Zaniyah Augustus gave birth to her first baby as well.
Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh visited all three babies yesterday, delivering hampers to the nurses and baby supplies to the new parents.
Deyalsingh took time from the visits to announce plans to launch a national educational drive to inform mothers-to-be about the dangers of gestational diabetes. The plan is expected to be rolled out next month.
“Right now it is going through the Central Tenders Board approval. it was supposed to have been signed off by now,” Deyalsingh said.
“The plan is being launched under the umbrella of the National Non-Communicable Diseases initiative to tackle everything in diabetes.”
Gestational diabetes is a condition that develops during pregnancy. Like other types of diabetes, gestational diabetes affects the body’s ability to process glucose. Gestational diabetes has been known to cause high blood sugar that can affect both the mother and the baby in the womb and after birth.
“What we want to do is have a life course approach to diabetes, tackle it from inception so the mother who is giving birth,” the minister said.
“When you have a mother who is diabetic and the baby grows in that environment, the baby generally tends to be overweight. That gives you problems and complications in delivery,” he said.
“It is one of the causes of maternal deaths, it is one of the causes of neonatal deaths.”
Deyalsingh said the national programme would help “trap” these mothers early on in the pregnancy and prevent a worsening of the situation.
According to the minister, one in every five pregnant women developed gestational diabetes. He said the initiative, while not under the umbrella of a national plan, would still be rolled out throughout the nation.
He said the babies born under those conditions weighed upwards of nine pounds.
“Babies then tend to develop Type I diabetes as children and then they are diabetic for life,” he said.
Deyalsingh said early intervention would save lives and improve the standard of living for many prone to the disease.