NSW Health denies birth defect cluster

[creampie]

New South Wales Health has denied there is a birth defect cluster in a small community in the state's Northern Rivers region.

Gastroschisis is a condition where a baby's intestines and organs grow outside the body through a hole in the abdominal wall.

In the past three years at least seven babies around Wadeville were born with the rare defect, which proves fatal for up to 10 per cent of children.

The global incidence of gastroschisis is one in 5,000, but data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics puts the incidence for the Northern Rivers region at one in 950 births.

The region's director of public health, Paul Corben, says there has been an expert panel investigating the issues since early March.

The investigation was launched in response to growing community concern.

"What we're seeing here is most likely just a random event," Mr Corben said.

"There's no evidence that over the last decade, indeed over the last three years, there has there been any difference in the rate of gastroschisis in that area than there is in other areas where we have similar rates of counting of cases.

"But none of that is of any surprise to the panel - there's no difference to what they'd expect.

"Naturally a condition that affects unborn babies can be of concern to the community but we don't want people worrying unnecessarily about things that are not real and for which there's no evidence that there's nasty things in their environment that might be harming unborn babies."

Jacqui McSkimming and her partner Matt Ostilla have first-hand knowledge of the condition; their son Olive was born with gastroschisis.

The couple from Barkers Vale, just five minutes drive from Wadeville, told 7.30 Queensland they discovered their son had the condition 36 hours before he was born.

"It was just a chaos, a mess having so much stuff hanging outside of him; actually I don't know how the surgeon held him up without it all falling on the ground," Mr Ostilla said.

They later realised there were many more families from the area whose babies had been born with the same birth defect in the past three years.

The expert panel is due to report back next week.



http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011 ... 216913.htm