Because the internet holds answers to most of life’s most important questions (special shout-out to YAHOO! ANSWERS), and currently my most pressing question is ‘When Will This Baby Arrive?’, I started blindly googling around with phrases like ‘STUPIDLY OVERDUE’ and ‘PREGNANT FOREVERRRR’.
Only 20% of that last sentence is remotely true. I actually used a Magic 8 Ball and came up with the answer: ‘The Future Is What You Make Of It’. Also untrue.
Truth is, I’m kind of tired of being pregnant and sick of the NHS’ incompetence, so I was looking for information on being overdue/induction on AMERICAN WEBSITES so I could get the complete skivvy on what should be going on with me. Take that, Britannia.
I went to ‘babycenter.com’ instead of ‘babycentre.co.uk’ and accidentally clicked on ‘36 weeks pregnant’ instead of ‘41 weeks’ and somehow started reading about something called Group B Strep (GBS). The internet is a terrible place for malingering hypochondriacs since you can easily convince yourself you’re going to die just by searching for something as innocuous as ‘Bruise On My Big Toe’, so generally I take all health-related stuff on there with a pinch of salt, but this GBS thing was stressing me out a bit. Group B Strep is a bacterium existing in 33% of adults and it does us no harm but can prove fatal to foetuses or babies. The bacteria can kill a baby, or present itself as meningitis (which has its own ballpark of fatalities and grim consequences). I figured that since medicine has figured out how to combat meningitis itself, they must have some way of preventing GBS hurting a baby and sure enough they do: a course of antibiotics. Genius.
Relieved and thinking ‘Well, at least there’s ONE pregnancy disaster that it entirely preventable’, I set about searching for how you get tested for GBS so that if I have it, I can make sure I get the antibiotics. I thought about ringing the ante-natal clinic but since they hassle me if I want so much as check-up, I figured I could just do some internet mumbo-jumbo and sure enough, I found the answer online: it’s a simple swab test.
Easy, yes?
No.
The USA (and even Canada with their socialised system) routinely test maternomorphs for GBS because it can kill babies YET IS ENTIRELY PREVENTABLE. Even France and Spain routinely test for it and the testing is highly successful: (it was found that routine screening brought the rate of GBS infant infection down by 86% in Spain). But of course, the NHS will not screen for GBS. Not only do the NHS refuse to screen for it, but they don’t even tell people it exists. Apparently around 9/10 first-time mothers in the UK haven’t even heard of GBS So to recap, 33% of women carry GBS, a bacterium that has potential to kill their baby but is completely treatable with cheap antibiotics, but the NHS will neither screen for it or even educate people about it’s existence?
So why don’t the NHS routinely screen maternomorphs for GBS since it’s treatable if detected? For the same reason they outsource MRI scan results to Bulgaria, take six months to get someone with a ruptured disk within ten miles of a specialist, and heavily advertise how important it is to react in a timely manner to someone having a stroke yet fail to get 3/4 stroke victims administered to appropriately within 48 hours of being hospitalised: it all comes back to cost. Herein lies a prime example of why government regulated healthcare actually equals government rationed healthcare, and you best had believe that it is not rationed in the publics favour.
The NHS’ official stand on why they don’t test for GBS is because it’s not ‘cost effective’. NICE (National Institute of Clinical Excellence… good one) and the Department of Health claim two reasons for why they won’t test for it: the test the NHS uses is only 50% accurate, and since only 33% of women have GBS, it’s not cost-effective to use such an inaccurate test to screen every maternomorph for GBS.
What they don’t tell you is that the test they use (the HVS) IS A JOKE – no country routinely testing for GBS uses such a stupid test. There is an alternative and much better swab test available. That test would cost the NHS £10 per person which sounds like a lot, but would save them £37 Million in not having to hospitalise and treat babies who end up contracting meningitis from GBS-ridden mothers and the likes and would reduce the contraction of GBS in newborns by around 80%.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but is it not completely deranged for a so-called ‘first-world country’ to be entirely aware of a potentially deadly infection, easily remedied with something as cheap as antibiotics, and do absolutely nothing about it because it’s not ‘cost-effective’, even though it actually is in the long run?
I met with a midwife today because even by the NHS’ due date for me, I am overdue. I asked her politely to please test me for GBS. She told me she couldn’t because it wasn’t ‘routine’ but not to worry because if I had it, it was easily treated with antibiotics. I said, sure, but how can you know to treat someone with antibiotics if you haven’t even tested them for the infection. She said ‘The NHS requires that I tell you that if they thought GBS was a particularly dangerous infection, they would test everyone’… What? She repeated the line about the NHS’ official stand on why they refuse to test (Thanks, Big Brother) and suggested vaguely that I go private to alleviate my worrying and make sure that if I did have it, I could get the antibiotics to stop it from harming the baby.
So. If you live in the UK, you get to pay extortionate taxes for teenagers to get their stomachs pumped ever weekend, or for that transgender woman to have a penis implant, or for an eighteen year old girl who cites ‘lack of confidence’ as a reason for getting her boobs enhanced, her nose done, and her browline altered, but you can’t so much as get a £10 test for a basic infection that could kill your baby unless treated with something as basic as penicillin. No wait, you CAN get that test, but you have to go private and pay 3x more for it instead. Mmmm! Who doesn’t love government rationed healthcare?
