Doctors Call For Breast Milk Banks
Neonatal specialists say the lives of many premature babies could be saved if there were more breast milk donation banks in Australia. The first national breastfeeding conference is being held in Melbourne and will today hear about the success of the milk bank at Perth’s King Edward Memorial Hospital. [...]

Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott says decisions about whether to keep sick premature babies alive should not be “forced on” families by governments.
He said discussions about whether to treat premature babies who were unlikely to survive, or were likely to be seriously disabled, were already happening between clinicians and families.
But he said a potential overlap [...]

Australian researchers are melding mathematics with medicine to develop a computer program they hope will be able to predict whether a pregnant woman will give birth prematurely.
The scientists are studying hormone levels in blood samples provided by 500 pregnant women they believe are related to the timing of birth.
“We’re developing equations that describe how those [...]

Babies born very prematurely have markedly less developed brains than those born at full term, a two-year Victorian study has revealed.
The study, which examined magnetic resonance images of premature babies’ brains and compared them with those of full-term infants, found that those born before 26 weeks gestation were at high risk of major brain development [...]

Doctors are warning parents of a virus that is potentially life-threatening to infants, particularly premature babies, on the first National Premmie Day. The day has been launched with a warning about respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, a common virus that causes about 6,000 children to be treated in hospital every year in Australia.
The risk of [...]

Scientists have found evidence that the cox-2 inhibitor celecoxib, a common pain reliever used to treat arthritis, may offer a new way to reduce the risk of the most common cause of brain damage in babies born prematurely.The work involves shoring up blood vessels in a part of the brain that in premature infants is [...]