The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Natural birth a tough sell in China’s caesarean boom Posted: 06 Jan 2013 04:49 AM PST  A mother smiling at her baby on a bed in a maternity ward at Antai Hospital in Beijing. – AFP pic BEIJING, Jan 6 – As an automatic piano chimed a wedding march, new mother Wang Dan walked down a red carpet towards a hospital room called the "White House", minutes after giving birth in a candlelit water pool. The suite is adorned with an enormous rococo style sofa and a Mona Lisa portrait, and 28-year-old Wang, who gave birth to a son, said: "I wanted to stay in the White House because it's large and well decorated." But Wang's presidentially-themed chamber at Beijing's Antai hospital — an expensive private facility aimed at the capital's wealthy middle class — was not the only unusual thing about the birth of her first child. In a country where most urban professionals choose caesarean sections, she stands out for choosing to give birth naturally. The proportion of Chinese mothers choosing caesareans more than doubled in less than a decade, from around 20 per cent in 2001 to above 46 per cent in 2008 - and approaching two-thirds in cities, according to the latest World Health Organisation figures for the country. Across Asia caesarean rates have reached "epidemic levels", it said in a 2010 report. Experts say that caesareans are necessary in many cases when a mother or baby has a health condition which would make a natural birth risky, but that the risks of elective operations are often greater than the benefits. China's caesarean rate is "definitely too high", said Shenlang Tang, a researcher into Chinese healthcare at Duke University in the US, adding that "the key factor is hospital financing". China has made huge strides in maternity care over the past decades, slashing its newborn death rate by almost two-thirds since the mid-nineties, largely by promoting hospital births. But Chinese hospitals receive little government funding and generate almost half their incomes from selling operations such as caesareans, with other revenues coming mainly from diagnostic tests and medicines. "The price of caesarean section based delivery can be up to three or four times that of a natural birth... which helps the hospital generate more revenue," Tang said. China's "one child" family planning policy also plays a role, as parents with more money to invest in their only childbirth are more likely to splash out on the procedure, which they see as safer, Tang said. "There are a lot of perceptions that if you have natural delivery it will affect your sex life," he added. Some local governments in China have launched campaigns to promote natural birth, he said, but there is no clear central government policy on the issue. In an attempt to encourage women to choose a natural birth, the Antai hospital offers water births and teaches expectant mothers hypnosis techniques to deal with the pain of labour. It also charges just as much for natural childbirth as it does for a caesarean, removing incentives for doctors to promote the operation. "Our major problem is that pregnant women in China are very scared of pain," Antai's director Chen Fenglin told AFP. "We found that even water birth couldn't reduce our patients' fear, which is why we introduced hypnosis," he said. A red carpet runs from Antai's delivery room towards a series of recovery suites, including the western-themed White House, a room aimed at Muslims called the "Islamabad Palace" and a chamber inspired by Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan. "Parents hope that their child can grow up to be an emperor or princess, or a president, so the rooms give the parents a beautiful dream," said Chen, who says his hospital has carried out more than 2,000 water births. An automated piano outside the delivery room plays a wedding march when mothers walk past with their newborn baby. "We want to express that a birth is as joyful as a wedding," Chen said. Its innovations have proved a hit with mothers such as Wang Dan, who are willing to pay its hefty fees. "I felt really happy when the wedding music played, because some people are in a lot of pain after giving birth, but I was simply excited," she said, adding that she did not use an anaesthetic. But downstairs from Antai's water-birth suite, the hospital's doctors are still busy performing caesareans. Chen doubts China's caesarean rate will fall significantly, because of the financial incentives hospitals face. "No matter how much you promote natural birth, it's ultimately a matter of economics," he said. – AFP-Relaxnews |
| Vienna Jewish museum may hold art stolen by Nazis Posted: 06 Jan 2013 03:03 AM PST  Figurines draped with Nazi insignia are seen as part of a display by British artists Jake and Dinos Chapman entitled "The End of Fun" in the Hermitage Museum in St.Petersburg December 11, 2012. – Reuters pic A screening programme that started in 2007, years after other Austrian museums began combing their collections for works taken from their rightful owners, has determined that about 500 works of art and 900 books are of dubious origin, Der Standard said. It cited in particular paintings by Jehudo Epstein, who while abroad in 1936 entrusted 172 works to industrialist Bernhard Altmann for safekeeping. Altmann fled the country in 1938 when Nazi Germany annexed Austria, and his factory was "Aryanised", the paper said. The widow of Epstein, who died in South Africa in 1945, tried in vain after 1947 to track down the paintings, some of which were later routinely sold at auction in Austria, it said. Several are now in the Jewish Museum's collection, it said, citing information it got from the museum after many requests. It quoted Danielle Spera, who became director in 2010, as saying the museum had, despite tight finances, for the first time hired in December 2011 a part-time researcher to check the provenances of its artworks. "Anything that was acquired illegally ought to be returned. There will not be a hint of hesitation," Spera told the paper. Der Standard said leaders of Austria's Jewish community, whose collections are on permanent loan to the municipal museum, voted in October to return an Epstein painting called Italienische Landschaft (Italian Landscape) and a work in a separate museum to the painter's heirs, who now live in England. That transfer could take place as early as this month, it said. The Jewish Museum is closed on Saturdays and no one there could be reached immediately for comment. It contains, among others, the Jewish community's own collection, bequeathed in 1992, a Max Berger collection bought by the city in 1988, the Sussmann collection, on loan since 1992, and donations from a collection by Martin Schlaff. Other Austrian museums have already had to grapple with the issue of returning looted art to the proper owners. A painting by Egon Schiele, which was seized by the Nazis on the eve of World War Two, was shown in public for the first time in more than a decade last year after the Leopold Museum reached a settlement with claimants that cost millions of dollars. The dispute was the second of two restitution cases the Leopold settled with the help of funds raised by selling another Schiele painting, "Houses with Colourful Laundry, Suburb II", for £24.7 million (RM121 million) at auction in 2011. – Reuters |
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