Seemingly innocuous: Pregnant women need to be better aware of the killer bug (posed by model)

Rising numbers of women are dying during pregnancy or soon after childbirth from a seemingly harmless bug, a report warns.

Death rates from the Group a streptococcal infection, which usually just causes a sore throat, have risen by nearly a third since 2005.

Doctors say that deaths could have been prevented if the bug had been diagnosed by medical staff in time and treated with antibiotics.

The Centre for Maternal and Child Enquiries (CMACE) found that 29 women died from the infection between 2006 and 2008, up from 21 between 2003 and 2005 and 13 from 2000 to 2002.

The bug, often spread between children, is most common during winter and normally causes a mild sore throat or skin infection.

But pregnant women or those who have just given birth are particularly vulnerable to a severe form, which can be fatal.

The report says that GPs, midwives and nurses are missing the initial symptoms of the deadly bug.

In one case, a pregnant woman called an out-of-hours GP complaining of a sore throat and fever, and was told she had a viral infection.

Hours later, she was admitted to hospital with breathing problems. despite being put on a life support machine, she died shortly after.

The report also warns that women often do not realise they are critically ill and so do not bother to seek help.

It states: ‘Some women and their families did not realise how ill they were, or they did not disclose or trivialised significant symptoms that might have allowed earlier intervention.’

It adds that ‘some healthcare workers did not appreciate the signs and symptoms or severity of the illness’. the bug can be spread from close contact with children and transferred from the throat or nose via a woman’s hands to other parts of her body, which can cause infection.

All those who died from the infection had young children or worked with them.

Several of the mothers, or their family members, had a recent history of sore throats or respiratory infections.

Dr Imogen Stephens, clinical director at CMACE, said: ‘It’s shocking that something like infection – and infection from a reasonably well-known organism – is a major cause of maternal mortality.’

She added: ‘While pregnancy is a lovely time, it’s not without risk. Pregnant women and their families need to be more aware and wash their hands.

‘When you’ve been among a large number of people, such as on public transport, you don’t need to be paranoid, but you should wash your hands when you get to  work and when you get home at the end of the day.’

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix stripped a major hospital of its affiliation with the church Tuesday because of a surgery that ended a woman’s pregnancy to save her life.

Bishop Thomas Olmsted called the 2009 procedure an abortion and said St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center — recognized internationally for its neurology and neurosurgery practices — violated ethical and religious directives of the national Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“In the decision to abort, the equal dignity of mother and her baby were not both upheld,” Olmsted said at a news conference announcing the decision. “The mother had a disease that needed to be treated. But instead of treating the disease, St. Joseph’s medical staff and ethics committee decided that the healthy, 11-week-old baby should be directly killed.”

St. Joseph’s does not receive direct funding from the church, but in addition to losing its Catholic endorsement, the 697-bed hospital will no longer be able to celebrate Mass and must remove the Blessed Sacrament from its chapel.

In a statement, St. Joseph’s President Linda Hunt said the hospital will comply with Olmsted’s decision, but she defended its actions.

“If we are presented with a situation in which a pregnancy threatens a woman’s life, our first priority is to save both patients. If that is not possible, we will always save the life we can save, and that is what we did in this case,” Hunt said. “Morally, ethically, and legally, we simply cannot stand by and let someone die whose life we might be able to save.”

The woman is in her 20s had a history of abnormally high blood pressure when she learned of her pregnancy. After she was admitted to the hospital with worsening symptoms, doctors determined her risk of death was nearly 100 percent.

The hospital’s ethics team concluded the pregnancy could be ended under the church’s ethical directives because “the goal was not to end the pregnancy but save the mother’s life,” the hospital said.

Hunt said, “St. Joseph’s will continue through our words and deeds to carry out the healing ministry of Jesus.”

Olmsted’s announcement came after months of talks between the Diocese, the hospital and the hospital’s parent company, Catholic Healthcare West.

“Unfortunately, subsequent communications with leadership at St. Joseph’s and (Catholic Healthcare West) have only eroded my confidence about their commitment to the church’s ethical and religious directives for healthcare,” Olmsted said. “They have not addressed in an adequate manner the scandal caused by the abortion.”

He said he recently learned that Catholic Healthcare West also is responsible for contraceptive counseling, voluntary sterilization, and other practices he said violate the ethical and religious directives.

St. Joseph’s is home to the Barrow Neurological Institute, where musician Bret Michaels was treated after he suffered a brain hemorrhage in April. the institute is home to the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center.

25 November 2010 last updated at 11:18 ET Share this page More than 25,000 Haitians are being treated for cholera symptoms

Haiti needs at least 1,000 more nurses and 100 doctors to stem deaths from its cholera epidemic, the UN's top humanitarian official has said.

Health workers in Haiti are also having to cope with shortages of almost all necessary equipment, Valerie Amos said during a visit to the country.

The Haitian government says more than 1,500 people have died.

Meanwhile, the World Bank has announced a $10m (£6.3m) emergency grant for Haiti.

In Haiti, the UN humanitarian chief said doctors and nurses across Haiti were overwhelmed and their efforts were being hampered by dire shortages of necessary supplies, from soap to body bags.

"We clearly need to do more," Baroness Amos told the Reuters news agency during a visit to the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.

"But it's not just money, it's crucially people, in terms of getting more doctors, nurses, more people who can help with the awareness-raising and getting information out there," she said.

The UN would reach out to countries and aid organisations with the potential to rapidly supply medical staff, she said – for example Cuba, which already has about 400 doctors and other health workers in Haiti.

"We have to control the outbreak and we have to bring down the percentage of people who are dying, and we have to do that as a matter of urgency."

UN officials have said that the international response to an appeal for $164m to help combat the cholera epidemic in Haiti has been insufficient.

Announcing its grant of $10m in emergency aid to Haiti, the World Bank said the cash was to be used partly to support non-profit organisations.

Officials in Haiti say that nearly 28,000 people have been treated in hospital with cholera symptoms and that the epidemic is spreading twice as fast as had been estimated.

A spokesman for the aid organisation Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) told the BBC the disease was spreading so fast that whenever MSF opened a new treatment centre it immediately filled up with patients.

He said patients in Port-au-Prince were struggling to reach clinics because of traffic gridlock in the city – and the fact that cholera can kill in four hours.

"They're dying in traffic jams," the spokesman told the BBC's mark Doyle, in the city.

On Wednesday the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator for Haiti, Nigel Fisher, said the scale of the outbreak meant that more than 200,000 cases of infection could be recorded in the first three months, instead of over six months as first estimated.

"This epidemic is moving faster and we are in unknown territory in Haiti just because this is moving so fast. There is no immunity to it", he said.

Mr Fisher added that the Haitian government would have to increase pressure on local authorities to find places for more treatment centres and to dispose of bodies.

Vaccine appeal

In the US on Wednesday, three public health experts urged the government to stockpile vaccines against cholera that could be deployed to parts of the world at high risk of an epidemic.

"The costs to the United States of creating and maintaining a stockpile of several million doses of cholera vaccines would be low," the experts write in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"But the humanitarian benefits of rapid deployment of cholera vaccines to areas at high risk for major cholera outbreaks could be enormous", argue Matthew Waldor of Harvard Medical School, Peter Hotez of George Washington University and John Clemens of the International Vaccine Institute in South Korea.

Sunday's presidential election is expected to go to a run-off in January.

"If the vaccine were available now, it could still be delivered to as-yet-unaffected parts of Haiti in time to stabilise the country before its national elections."

Campaigning is meanwhile in full swing for the elections, scheduled for Sunday, when Haitians will elect a new president and legislative members.

Some human rights groups and four of the 19 presidential candidates have called for the elections to be postponed because of the cholera epidemic.

And the director of Haiti's electoral registry, Philippe Augustin, told AFP news agency that he feared there would be widespread fraud in the poll.

"We need massive participation and many observers and journalists" to ensure a fair election, he said.

There have been outbreaks of violence between rival political factions in the run-up to the vote. But the UN mission in Haiti, Minustah, says the conditions for a successful vote are good.

Sunday's elections are seen as a crucial step towards giving Haiti a stable government that can lead recovery efforts after January's massive earthquake, which killed about 230,000 people and shattered the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Some 19 candidates are vying to succeed President Rene Preval and it is likely that the election will go to a second round run-off on 16 January.

Most candidates have insisted that the elections, which will also choose 99 deputies and 10 senators, should go ahead as planned.