A round-up of today's other stories in brief
Shopping can add years, study finds
SHOPPING REGULARLY can help people to live longer, a study has suggested. Scientists in Taiwan found that those who shopped frequently tended to outlive those who went less often – even when other factors were taken into account.
Those who shopped every day were 27 per cent less likely to die within the 10-year study period compared to those who never shopped. The study, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, showed older men were particularly likely to benefit.
Midwife puts forward proposal for birth centre
ONE OF THE country’s most prominent home birth advocates has put forward a proposal for Dublin’s first birth centre.
Independent midwife Philomena Canning said she had had 622 expressions of interest from women looking to use a birth centre since she opened her website birthcentre.ie last month. She will be a guest speaker at the home birth conference at the Hilton Dublin Airport Hotel on Saturday.
Ms Canning has called her project Alukura House, meaning “place of birth”, as a result of her experiences as a midwife with Aboriginal women in central Australia. A birth centre is a midwife-led centre which is like a halfway house between a home and a hospital birth. They are common throughout Europe, but to date the only Irish equivalents have been the midwifery-led units attached to Cavan General Hospital and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.
Ms Canning said Alukura House would be a stand-alone facility, not attached to a hospital.
She said the extent of interest had convinced her to “forge ahead” with Alukura House and she was looking for a site within the M50 boundary. “The business plan has been favourably reviewed by the accountants and they are confident they can get it financed,” she said. “Once I have a site secured Im expecting the pace to pick up.”
The home birth centre will be available to healthy women with no medical or obstetric complications. Ms Canning envisages that it will initially only be open to women with health insurance, but she hopes the success of the venture will then attract public funding.
Children's care limited from palliative services
AN AUDIT OF palliative respite care services for children with life-limiting conditions in two HSE regions has found that, while the quality of care available is good, it is only available to some families.
Funded by the Irish Hospice Foundation and the Childrens Sunshine Home, the audit found there were only two respite beds for children needing palliative care in the Dublin Mid-Leinster and Dublin North-East HSE regions, which cover 11 counties including Dublin.
The report of the audit, to be published tomorrow, estimates up to €10 million is needed per annum to provide adequate palliative respite care to 411 children in those counties. This would be based on each child getting eight hours’ respite care a week and that 70 per cent of care would be provided in the home.
It says this figure will rise to at least €12 million a year by 2021 as the number of children needing the services in those two HSE regions increases in line with a growth in population trends. By then, an estimated 478 children will need the services.
The report says it is difficult to estimate how much is currently being spent on respite care services for these children but, given that services are not available to those who need them now, it’s likely that an increase in funding will be required to meet the needs of all. Access to services at present is dependant on a child’s age, diagnosis, prognosis, and where the child lives.
An estimated 1,400 children are living with life-limiting conditions in Ireland. There are about 350 child deaths each year – the majority in the first year of life.