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WOMEN WHO SUFFER from low iron levels in pregnancy are much more likely to have a baby with heart disease, experts have found in a “gamechanger” discovery.
For the first time, researchers have linked anaemia in early pregnancy and congenital heart disease, which is when heart problems develop in the womb and are present from birth.
As a result of the findings, researchers now estimate that anaemia in pregnant women may account for around one in 20 congenital heart disease cases in the UK.
The condition is the most common kind of birth defect, diagnosed in an average of 13 babies every day in the UK, and is a major cause of death.
In Ireland, approximately 500 to 600 babies are born annually with congenital heart disease.
Last year, a study from University College Cork found that four out of five pregnant women in Ireland are iron deficient by their third trimester.
The HSE advises pregnant women to eat iron-rich foods such as red meat, eggs, pulses and green vegetables. The health service says haem iron – which is found in red meat and is more easily absorbed by the body – should be consumed two to three times a week.
Nearly a quarter of pregnant women in the UK – and more than a third of pregnant women globally – are thought to have anaemia.
As part of the new work, published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, experts will now investigate whether taking iron supplements before and during pregnancy could help prevent heart defects.
The study looked at data from 16,500 mothers and found that, if the mother was anaemic in the first 100 days of pregnancy (around the first three months), the likelihood of having a child with congenital heart disease was much higher than usual.
The study said: “After adjusting for potential confounders, the odds of giving birth to a congenital heart disease-diagnosed child were 47% higher among anaemic mothers.”
It is is already known that severe anaemia in the later stages of pregnancy causes problems such as low birth weight and premature delivery, but this is the first time anaemia in the early stages has been identified as an issue.
Associate professor Duncan Sparrow, from the University of Oxford, who led the study funded by the British Heart Foundation, said: “Knowing that early maternal anaemia is so damaging could be a gamechanger worldwide.
“Because iron deficiency is the root cause of many cases of anaemia, widespread iron supplementation for women – both when trying for a baby and when pregnant – could help prevent congenital heart disease in many newborns before it has developed.”
The researchers previously found a link between anaemia during pregnancy and congenital heart disease in mice.
To investigate this link, they used anonymised data from GP records to see what was happening in mothers and babies.
More than 2,700 mothers who had a child with congenital heart disease were identified and matched with women whose children did not have the condition.
Blood test results from the first 100 days of each pregnancy were then used to determine whether the mothers had anaemia at that point.
In the group of mothers who had a child with congenital heart disease, 4.4% had anaemia.
This was compared to 2.8% of mothers having anaemia whose children did not develop congenital heart disease.
Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, clinical director at the British Heart Foundation and consultant cardiologist, said: “If low iron turns out to be one of the culprits, then replenishing iron levels during early pregnancy when the baby’s heart is forming could have significant benefit for a baby’s lifelong heart health.
“Larger studies are needed to confirm the finding and determine which type of congenital heart disease may be linked to low iron.
“It is also important to note that the usual risk of having a child with a congenital heart disease is around 1%, so even with the increase that this study suggests, the individual risk for people with no family history of congenital heart disease is still relatively small.”
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Love to use the bus or train but because I have a family it’s way too expensive, it’s much cheaper to go by car
Bus Eireann:
“Maybe families require transportation, we don’t know. We don’t want to know. Frankly it’s a market we could do without”
@Joe Murphy: @Deborah Behan: I cant fathom that expense….it’s a rip off …
So that’s it? Goodbye and good luck!
Noam Chomsky “That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.”
I don’t recall saying good luck…
Exactly, 4 bucks should cover a family ticket on any bus
Public transport is very expensive in Ireland compared to Germany which has a much better transport system. A public transport day ticket for up to 5 adults (with 2 children counting as 1 adult) costs €12 in Munich. 4 people can travel on regional trains for the entire state of Bavaria for the day for €38 (an area approximately the size of Ireland).
@Joe Murphy: Sell it, or fire management and restructure it.
@colonel, the Bayer ticket is great, have used it a lot, including Salzburg too.
@Joe Murphy:
What about a system similar to the Luas?
Pay a private contractor to provide the buses and drivers for a fixed price per route and let the state keep the fares.
Eliminate the main fear people have of privatization, it won’t matter to the bus company if there are only one or two on the bus they will still get paid.
Just a suggestion.
Joe the cost of your car, depreciation, tax, insurance , fuel , maintenance is cheaper than travelling by bus or train ? I visit my family in Wexford & Cork via bus eireann my last return ticket to Wexford was €21 euro would cost more to fill my car!
It’s hardly surprising! Unions have the public sector over a barrel so it’s only a matter of time really. Impossible to reduce fares too considering the salaries people demand and get.
He’s deliberately leaving those out to try and make his moany point that he thinks bus/train travel is too expensive.
Comparing total cost of a bus journey only with the marginal cost of a car journey… Once you own, tax, maintain insure the car… the marginal cost of one making one more journey is negligible can appear cheap. An educated mind knows that’s not the true reality and the variable AND the fixed costs have to be considered.
@P.J. Nolan: I believe that that approach was taken with train services in the UK and while it was initially successful, it gradually leads to fewer services and/or higher ticket costs. we should also remember that Bus Eireann has to carry many passengers for free and run many routes that are complete write-offs as part of its service.
However after spending 5 years living in Warsaw and using Bus Eireann extensively while living in Ireland before that I can safely say that:
1. Nobody in Bus Eireann knows how to run a bus service. It’s like they’re a bunch of amateurs.
2. Or maybe its just the unions must have way too much power and few progressive changes can be made.
3. Most likely a combination of 1 and 2
That’s just one person. Yes cheaper indeed, but paying for a family is different. Price 4 people and things start to sky rocket.
@Arthur O Keeffe:
We are already getting a gradual reduction in services and price increases so that wouldn’t be any difference. Either way the government would set prices and routes.
Agree with points 1,2 and 3 and would add a 4.
Irelands sparsely populated countryside will mean a bus service will always be necessary but expensive.
@P.J. Nolan: I highly doubt that the government would set the prices if it is privitised. Instead I imagine it would be like what they did with the lotto. Ring fence the important items e.g. student and OAP discounts but the rest of us will have to pay whatever they ask and accept whatever service they offer. Which is kind of like Bus Eireann now.
I agree with point 4 but when they can’t even get city and expressway transport right, how will they ever have enough money for loss making routes.
Something kind of stinks about this company. Like why has it been run so poorly for so long? It’s kind of important for buses to function on time. Who on Earth is in charge of it?
Ok I checked and it seems I’m a little behind in this story but I hope that whom ever replaces Martin Nolan will have a little more vision than doing things the same as they have always done.
Rural Ireland..you can not get into Sligo on any morning during the week before 10am from most outside rural areas, there is many towns and villages throughout Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon, Donegal and no doubt every other rural county were there is NO bus service at all …nothing …. Both the Rail & the Bus services in Ireland, outside Dublin are absolutely shocking, expensive and very limited…..and we are supposed to be developed nation……To take my family to Dublin and back for a day on a train is over €120….MAD …I was in spain a few years ago and paid €2 for a train.
I can not understand why the costs are so high, dropping the costs would fill more seats, filled seats mean busy buses and trains, and also means more people can travel further to work, shop and play …but maybe thats to developed for this developed nation..If yo want to look for a bus in Irealnd, watch a childrens TV show..at least the wheels of them buses go round and round..Irish ones find that bit difficult..and when they do manage to eventually go round and round, they cost a fortune a give a Ps poor service….
@CJ Stewart: Public transportation is awful in Ireland, 2 of us got the train from Mullingar to Dublin return for €39 for a match in the Aviva, we had to rush out of the stadium after the match to catch the last train back at 8pm, mind you they did have the train waiting just beside the dart exit at Connolly & it waited an extra 15/20 mins for the darts coming from the Aviva. In the UK it’s also expensive to get the train but at least the services between major cities don’t stop in the early evening.
Even if they went to places I needed to go to or come from I wouldn’t use them as it’s like Russian roulette. They are inefficient, expensive, and unreliable. My partners 5 pm bus arrives any time between 4:45 and 5:30 meaning it can either be a case of miss the bus completely or leave work early and end up waiting for 45 mins in the pouring rain. Whatever the evils of and arguments against privatisation, Bus Eireann as it currently stands being semi state is a complete f-ing disaster
Public transport by design is always going to lose money. It’s an effing service that is vital to every country. This is what successive governments in ireland dream of. Run whatever public service into the ground, champion the virtues of the private sector and then shirk themselves of the actual responsibility of running it while still collecting their massive wages.
It’s actually the commercial Expressway service that is losing all the money, not the PSO services.
@Chris Mansfield: That may be true, but some of the rural routes they have are a joke. My bus route, could take in many more towns and earn extra money. It’s a huge expressway bus, with only a handful on all day and serves only three towns in a straight line. It could take in 6 towns and earn its keep.
Wexford Bus all the way, fantastic service to the airport and Dublin, clean, efficient and always on time.
100% Wexford bus are an excellent company & they provide a great service – lovely drivers too
Use Wexford bus every day for my commute from Enniscorthy to Dublin. Taxsaver annual ticket is great, new leap card system is quick and ability to book seats is great for busy services.
May I ask how much for ticket? If that’s not to rude
Annual ticket is €2900 gross.
@Paul Somers: It took Ardcavan in the 80′s to get Bus Eireann to up their game and for a while there was a price war and an increase in services. A monthly return ticket for a fiver was great value. Wexford bus provides a fantastic service as opposed to the nightmare journey with Bus Eireann. The last time I travelled with BE, it took over three and a half hours to get from Dublin Airport to Wexford town. I would have been faster on a horse drawn carriage! I get that they’re public service, but their failure to provide better local services to feeder routes has stopped people like me using public transport.
But that’s just it. Private operators, like Wexford bus, can pick and choose the more profitable routes and focus on them, reap the rewards of them without having to focus on the loss making public service routes that BE have to run. Maybe a system similar to the risk equalisation of the health insurance might be a solution. If a private company wants to benefit from the lucrative routes, they should contribute to the loss making ones as well, either by providing a service on those routes themselves or contributing to those companies that do.
I’ll wait till I get the bus pass!!
@Paul Somers: It probably runs on time because it doesn’t have to go through the city centre.
A friend and myself got a bus from Glasgow station to the Glasgow Airport. There was only 2 of us and the driver on board for the entire journey. In ireland that service would be shut down. We have profits on the brain. It’s an essential service that is Bus eireann and Irish Rail. Ireland is already the most expensive country to run a car yet you need it the most.
Ireland to be the first country in the world to have no public transport of any description.
@Brendan Mason: …imagine trying to explain what a bus was in a museum to your grand childer
@Brendan Mason: the one good thing I’ll say about bus eireann is that they provide a service even when there are few passengers. I’ve often been on a long journey with just a handful of passengers
@Anne Marie Devlin: …Anne..that was the board of directors !
Worst service ever… Busses don’t show up on time some (not all mind) drivers are extremely rude overpriced fares.. When I go to my home in west cork it’s a 1.5 hr journey & costs €30.00 which is daylight robbery considering Dublin is a 3 hr bus ride & half the cost.. If they did privatise bus Eireann it’s the elderly with DSW passes would suffer.. Never occurred to bus Eireann or Irish rail that’s it’s ppl who cannot afford a car take busses & trains not swanky td’s or doctors or wealthy office solicitors…
Fortunately I have no need to.
A friend of mine who is sub contracted for maintenance work in a Bus Eireann depot recently handed in his notice as he found it too troublesome getting paid from the company who hold the tender. On average he would end up waiting 3 to 4 months for payment which made it virtually impossible to survive in the interim.
Very poorly run company but it would be a scandal if the government allows our national bus service go to the wall.
Unfortunately Fine Gael are a party of privatization so doubt very much if they have either the interest or the political will to save Bus Eireann.
Let it go under and rebuild from the bottom up
Bus Eireann is a service the country cannot afford to lose.If the bus service is privatised there are a lot of small towns in this country will suffer.The free market is only interested in profits not people. The service is being run into the ground thanks to the ivory tower merchants in Kildare Street who have no need and will never have any need to use this service thanks to their generosity to themselves.
I used to but I switched to the train when their customer service were incompetent. The N7 green bus is killing them too. They’re arrogant. They’re just like bankers. They expect the taxpayer to step in and save them
@Awkward Seal: it is a public service.
And it’s terrible. It’s not from lack of money either. There’s no consequences for the drivers or staff of their buses are an hour late. And even the regular services take you on a grand tour of every two person village between you and your destination. And they rip you off for the privilege. It’s funny to watch the BE bus show up and a stop in Kildare and for nobody to get on. Then the N7 green bus comes and the crowds pile on. Unsurprising when it’s €1 one-way within Kildare.
Great service from bus Eireann, buses are almost always on time, smooth and comfortable, good wifi but they are more expensive than private operators.
John do I detect a hint of sarcasm there cos if not I think you need a reality check…
@Veronica, no sarcasm, just my own experience.
i used to use them to dundalk, awful service, took close to 2 hours and very unreliable.
Drat I thought this was a poll on Zappone’s generosity with our tax money and I pressed NO.
I would say the majority of Irish citizens would have voted yes.
Deborah…turn back a few pages and read these comments.
Would it help if we gave them 11.3 million
@Francid Dooley: Keep throwing money at transport without making changes to the structure of the business doesn’t make it more efficient. Accountants Grant Thornton need to sit down with Ross and his mates and spell out the realities of running a profitable business, clearly they haven’t got a clue if they think that more money will solve anything.
Bus Eireann provide transport to lot of areas where there is no other service provided as a alternative and is used by lot of people to get to work yes at certain times of the day you can have only 1 or 2 passengers but during peak hours can be nearly full.If Bus Eireann was gone would a private contractor provide a bus to these routes leaving lot of passengers not able to get to work
Not to mind they provide the only city buses in Cork and Limerick and the backbone of the service in Galway and Waterford.
@Paul Boland:
The government is subsidizing the routes with 1 or 2 passengers as it is through BE, let them subsidize a private contractor to do it, cost per mile to the state would be a lot less.
the train is way more comfy you can get up &walk around & theres food onboard
Trains are always packed, the whole booking seats fad is annoying as you could book a seat and still end up standing. Also there is the no one-way travel on a Sunday which is a laugh, people who actually need it are being ripped off.
There is lot of towns in Ireland that don’t have train service and Bus Eireann is the only transport available No point saying use the train when there is no train service.lot of people use Bus Eireann to get to work and a private contractor more than likely would not provide a service. Lot of rural and urban towns have no train service
It is easy to say ‘put the money into trains’ but what happens to places like Cavan and Monaghan where there are no trains. The problems as I see it are poor route management where buses don’t run to the timetable and are often late due to congestion getting in or out of Dublin. Busarus is in the wrong place for most bus routes and would be better located in Blanchardstown close to the M50 & M3.
I have said it before that a rapid rail link between the city centre and Blanchardstown would be the ideal solution. Plenty of space out there for park-n-ride as well as a modern bus depot. They would easily pay for it over time if they sold off the present busarus site.
That makes a lot of sense Chris and in fairness Busarus is probably worth a pretty penny too.
From my little experience there is little joined up thinking – but you can get to almost anywhere in Ireland by bus – and that in itself is great – but a review of the times and train transfers etc. does need to take place as well as the arrival times and work times in work centers. The costings need to be reviewed and bus/rail combinations tickets available – and at off peak times special family rates should apply – better to fill empty seats at 10 euro a piece.
The bottom line however is that parts of Rural Ireland depend upon a bus service and this is worth investing in and, for social reasons, having some route subsidies available regardless of the operaton
@Niall Ó Cofaigh: Niall, I travel to Dublin every couple of weeks from Cavan for appointments at Dublin’s Mater hospital. I have to take a 6am bus to get to the hospital in time for my 9am appointment. The journey time is supposed to be two hours but if I leave it any later then the journey can take up to three hours. Paying the fare is not the problem for most people, it is the unreliability of the service without factoring delays due to congestion etc.
If taking the bus isn’t enough motivation to improve your station in life then nothing is.
Mathews coach for me, comes and leaves on time, not a minute past
Kearns bus company from Dublin to Galway
Do use it occasionally but it never keeps to timetable. X12 often up to an hour behind schedule into Nenagh.
Some people have no alternative and rely on the bus for work, college etc. That is the reality and you can’t wish that away. However the transport policy in Ireland is a complete mess with the National Transport Authority and Bus Eireann passing the buck between them and neither taking responsibility. There is no way for the voice of the passengers to be heard in the transport system. Mass transport needs to be a public service the farce with the privatised train system in the UK proves that. However it needs to be accountable. There needs to be consequences for poor decisions and performance at management level in both the NTA and BE. Realistic timetables which take into acount known travel conditions, real time information,and integrated ticketing need to be properly implemented.
Used to use them, €2400 per year. Changed to private bus for same route and now pay €1250 per year. Lots will suffer initially if they go but if demand is there someone will fill the void.
Put the money into trains
I resorted to taking a BÉ coach late night from Galway to Dublin. Aside from taking the old road from Galway to Athlone (and then sitting in Athlone Railway Station for 10mins without even a vending machine), the coach itself was in poor repair with broken and vandalised seats, graffiti and lighter- burn-marks on the plastics of the window frame.
The journey took almost 3 1/2 hours, an hour longer than the privately-run services.
In fairness, it’s providing a link to those small towns that the likes of Citylink & GoBus should also be providing to some degree.
By rights, where a private company win a license to operate on a profitable route such as Galway-Dublin Airport Direct, they should be obligated to provide a separate scheduled bus service on pre-determined non-profit-making rural routes. They can’t be hoovering up the profitable business from BÉ and expect BÉ to serve every village, cloghan and crossroads in the country forever. The outcome will be poor investment in vehicle stock, dilapidated vehicles and loss of custom from travellers who want a higher level of comfort and modernity (wifi, power-sockets, etc).
Sometimes I have to use bus eireann to get to college but I have had dozens of incidents where the bus was super late (at least forty minutes) or the bus never turned up at all. I have missed important college classes, appointments and was two hours late picking up my friend from the airport because of bus eireann. But there is no other alternative because I live rural. I have also been the only person on a bus going all the way from Enfield to Dublin at least four or five times. Madness.
Also to add, random buses seem to have no leapcard system and I can never tell which bus will or won’t have it. I always have to keep money on me in case. One time when I was journeying to Galway for a few days, I put about forty euro on my leap card. Not one bus that I encountered had a working leapcard system so I had to dig into the holiday fund and pay the higher cash ticket.
i still use the bus despite the fact i had to buy a bicycle due to irregularities surrounding the arrival of certain buses due at certain times, driver training seems to also be an issue as many still don’t fully understand how the leap card system works and a very small few don’t know how their ticket machine works either
One of those Vulture funds y’all hate so much will snap it up at a bankruptcy fire sale price… re-work the network, slash unprofitable routes, deal with inefficient work contracts, bloated middle management, increase productivity, performance based pay and reduce tenure based salary scales, better, faster more reliable services, technology and ticketing to increase ridership and utilisation.
Government can subsidise routes deemed to of social importance/benefit to certain areas and people if needed
Ashbourne connect is a brilliant bus service. Always on time and drivers are really friendly. Busses are spotless. Keep up the great work guys.
Let’s see if when it does collapse, are regional tenders given a fair go or will it be outsourced to the mainland as has been the case in the past.
Drove after one of the buses one day in Allow, I had an elderly couple who were going to Wedgies & we’re at the wrong place for a pick up by the Bus. The Bus pulled in at its nominated pick up & set down point, I pulled in at the front part of the Bus & signalled the driver I had passengers for the Bus, the couple were walking towards the Bus & the driver blasted the horn in annoyance with me pulling in. He drove off & left the couple on the footpath looking bewildered! Bad form..
14% yes? About the amount of OAP’s with free travel ?! Such a pity
M7 express is great
They have been getting away with it for years, once the private operators came in Bus Eireann’s day of fleecing the public was numbered.
I am a bit surprised about some comments regarding drivers. Whenever I used Bus Eireann, their drivers were friendly and helpful, and they knew how to drive safely. I cannot say the same about some private bus drivers. And while I do prefer the train, the train cannot get you to every little village; so, yes, Bus Eireann provides an important public service.
As to the commercial side of it, it seems that private operators are picking the raisins from the cake, e.g. non-stop services from Galway to Dublin. Bus Eireann in contrast also serves 23 stops in between, which is obviously more expensive than staying on the motorway. I know our lovely economists would like to dump everything which does not make profit, but the consequences for rural areas would be grave.
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