It's Your Baby too, so what are You gonna do?

Health News: Racism Feeds High Black Infant Death Rate; African Plant Found To Have Healing Properties
Posted August 1, 2007

Study: Genes have nothing to do with high Black infant mortality rates.The disproportionate number of high low-birth-weight Black babies has nothing to do with genes, says a new report by researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Low-birth weights and high infant mortality among Blacks is more the result of inadequate health care and racism, according to Richard David, a U of I associate professor. David co-authored a report published in the July American Journal of Public Health, which compared the birth weight of three groups of women: African Americans, Whites and Africans who moved to Illinois. “If there were such a thing as a (pre-term birth) gene, you would expect the African women to have the lowest birth weights,” David said. “But the African and White women were virtually identical,” with significantly higher birth weights than the African-American women, he said. The researchers did a similar analysis of births to Black Caribbean women immigrants to the United States and found they gave birth to infants hundreds of grams heavier than the babies of U.S.-born Black women. For Black women, “something about growing up in America seems to be bad for your baby’s birth weight,” said David, who talked with Black women who had normal weight babies and those with babies of 3 pounds or less and found that those with low-birth-weight babies more often reported feeling stressed because of racial discrimination. “We interpreted this finding as another indicator of stress, but one caused by institutional rather than interpersonal racial discrimination,” David said. Another reason African-American mothers have babies who weigh less at birth is that they are at greater risk for such conditions as high blood pressure, the study found.
African “hemorrhage plant” is found to contain healing propertiesThe leaves of Aspilia africana, a plant used in African traditional medicine, is found to stop bleeding, block infection and speed wound healing, a new study from Nigeria confirms. The leaves and flowers of A. Africana, a bristle-covered herb known as the “hemorrhage plant,” have been used to stop bleeding, remove foreign bodies from the eyes, treat scorpion stings, and for several other purposes across the African continent, note Dr. Charles O. Okoli and colleagues at the University of Nigeria. To test the plant’s medicinal properties, Okoli and his team performed a series of lab and animal experiments comparing the effects of an extract of the powdered leaves in methanol, and two different portions or fractions containing hexane or methanol. The extract and the fractions of the plant significantly reduced bleeding and clotting time in rats, the researchers found, with the methanol fraction having the strongest effect. All components also slowed the growth of Pseudomonas fluorescens and Staphylococcus aureus, two common wound-infecting bacteria, and reduced wound healing time. “The results of this study indicate that extracts of leaves of A. Africana have good potentials for use in wound care and further provide a rationale for the use of the leaves of this plant in wound management in traditional medicine practice,” they concluded. The researchers reported their findings in BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine.