Children in prison face increased risk
Posted on: Thursday, 9 April 2009, 10:20 CDT
Young children living in Italian prisons with their mothers are more likely to born prematurely and less likely to be vaccinated, researchers said.
Italian law allows children up to the age of 3 to live with their mothers behind bars.
Doctors from the pediatric clinic at the Catholic University of Rome studied the living conditions of about 150 children in Rome's main prison over an 18-month period. They found 20 percent of the children were born before the mother's 37th week of pregnancy, a figure attributed to environmental risk factors.
Often women who end up in prison are subjected to infections, have wrong habits, like smoking or the taking of narcotics and frequently pregnancy is not properly taken care of,
researcher Pietro Ferrara said Thursday in a release.
Ferrara said only 14 percent of children in prison are properly immunized.
In Italian children the rate of (vaccine) coverage is about 100 percent, which means that nearly all of them are correctly vaccinated. Immigrants' children, who live through greater logistical and cultural hitches, still reach more than 80 percent,
Ferrara said.
Source: United Press International
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