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My Dragon's Lair Sharing is the reason for my being...

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Friday, November 02, 2007

Doctors Urged on Signs of Lead Poisoning

ATLANTA - Children with blood lead levels lower than the U.S. standard may still suffer lower IQs or other problems, a government advisory panel said Thursday as it urged doctors to be more alert to signs of lead poisoning.
The warning, in a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, comes amid growing parent concerns over imported toys with lead.
Lead poisoning can cause irreversible learning disabilities and behavioral problems and, at very high levels, seizures, coma and even death.

The CDC has never set a threshold for what defines lead poisoning. But it created a standard of sorts in 1991 when it said a lead level of 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood should prompt a doctor to assess the child's environment and take other protective steps.
"You can have toxicity at levels all the way down to zero," said Dr. Morri Markowitz, director of the pediatric environmental sciences clinic at New York City's Montefiore Medical Center. He was not involved in the report.
However, the guideline of 10 micrograms has become the number that doctors use when deciding to refer a child for further attention. The same number is used in Canada and Britain.
This is the first time the Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention has focused on the risks to children with lower levels of lead in their blood, said Dr. Helen Binns of Northwestern University, primary author of the report.
The panel isn't proposing a new standard, she said, but is "emphasizing that all levels are important."
The report is being published in the November issue of the medical journal Pediatrics.
Children with blood lead levels below 10, or even those up to 20, exhibit no obvious symptoms. But scientists believe intellectual development may be affected at lower levels.
The new report was driven by recent research that indicated differences in intellectual development of children with measurable levels of lead poisoning as compared to other kids.
The paper advises doctors how to talk to parents of children who have lower levels of lead and how to describe the risk, nutrition changes and safeguards to prevent any additional exposure, Binns said.
There's no treatment proven effective at reducing these lead levels in children, said Mary Jean Brown, chief of the CDC's lead poisoning prevention branch.
"We don't have an intervention that will lower a blood lead level from 8 to 4," she said.
The paper also recommends that doctors check the labs they use for testing blood, because some are more exact than others.
Approximately 310,000 U.S. children aged 1-5 years have blood lead levels greater than 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, according to CDC estimates. That's fewer than 2 percent of children in that age bracket. By MIKE STOBBE AP Medical Writer
8:01 PM EDT, November 1, 2007
On the Net: The CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr More articles

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posted by LadyIrene @ 11/02/2007 11:35:00 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Savior of Orphans

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Glassy-eyed and so thin his bones protrude through his skin, a newborn infant named only Rony stares up at a dirty ceiling hour after hour, frozen in his crib because of a softball-sized tumor on the back of his neck.

art.krabacher.haiti.jpg
  • Story Highlights
  • Former Playboy centerfold helping scores of abandoned Haitian babies
  • Susie Scott Krabacher founded the Mercy and Sharing Foundation
  • Charity has given shelter, schooling and health care to thousands of children
  • Krabacher's memoir, "Angels of a Lower Flight," being released this month

Susie Scott Krabacher holds an abandoned baby at the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Then an hourglass-shaped, platinum-haired woman flashing a megawatt smile and wearing diamond earrings and designer blue jeans leans over his crib in the steamy hospital ward, locks her long arms around the child and gently pulls him toward her.

"They don't hold the children much here," says Susie Scott Krabacher, a former Playboy centerfold who over the last 15 years has become an unlikely patron savior for scores of abandoned Haitian babies.

Krabacher, 43, founded the Mercy and Sharing Foundation, an Aspen, Colorado-based charity that has provided shelter, schooling and health care to thousands of children from the poorest slums of this troubled Caribbean nation. The charity, funded mostly through private donors, runs six schools, three orphanages, an abandoned-baby ward and a cervical cancer screening center.

"If it wasn't for her, all of those kids would be dead today," said Bob Lataillade, who runs Mercy and Sharing's main orphanage in Port-au-Prince.

Krabacher chronicles her unusual journey -- from partying in Hugh Hefner's mansion to setting up Haiti's first hospital ward for abandoned babies -- in a memoir to be released in October called "Angels of a Lower Flight" (Simon & Schuster).

The book, which is expected to be made into a Hollywood film, details Krabacher's childhood growing up poor in Alabama and her wilder days at Playboy, where she had a 10-year career, including a May 1983 centerfold spread.

With her long blonde locks and statuesque figure, Krabacher cuts an odd figure in the streets of Haiti's gritty capital. She has been known to waltz into the most dangerous slums wearing platform boots and flowing skirts to ask tattooed gang leaders to allow her charity work to proceed without being robbed.

On her first visit to the country in 1994, Krabacher visited Port-au-Prince's bleak General Hospital and was shocked to find scores of unwanted babies left abandoned and without food in their cribs, including one who had died without anyone noticing.

"There were rats the size of Chihuahuas. They would run all over the place and bite the children. It was horrible," Krabacher, who lives in Aspen but visits Haiti several times a year, told The Associated Press during a recent trip here.

Krabacher eventually persuaded hospital officials to allow her and her husband, Joe, to pay to fix up the ward, which today cares for about 20 children.

Like little Rony, many were left outside the hospital entrance, often frail and barely clinging to life.

"He's going to suffer his entire life. But at least we can give him some humanity so he doesn't have to die in utter misery," Krabacher says, gently swaying Rony in her arms.

A couple of weeks later, Rony died. He was three months old.

Krabacher has had to overcome setbacks in her mission to help Haiti's neediest.

When the abandoned baby ward first opened, people stole the ceiling fans, the refrigerator and baby mattresses.

After rebels forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power in 2004, Krabacher flew into the chaotic capital and found that looters had broken into a food warehouse and stolen the orphanage's supply of rice, beans and milk.

Don't Miss In Depth: CNN Heroes Mercy and Sharing Foundation

For her work, Krabacher was made an honorary Haitian citizen and in 2004 was invited to Buckingham Palace to receive the Rose Award, presented by the foundation established to further Princess Diana's commitment to the poor.

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posted by LadyIrene @ 10/17/2007 01:10:00 PM 0 comments