Content warning: references pregnancy loss
When Reena Rana miscarried her first pregnancy in 2013, she waited at the hospital’s A&E department for hours.
“I was two and a half months pregnant and I started spotting. I rushed to the hospital, and they said, ‘Why don’t you take a seat, we are very busy. They made me sit for four and half hours,” the 36-year-old said.
It wasn’t until Reena lost more blood that she said she was given more attention, and then sent home with the message that she had lost her baby.
“It’s a very emotional time, and there was no empathy. If they could just explain the procedure to me, [instead] they said, ‘When you have big clots, you come and see us’. That’s not very nice.”
Coronavirus Australia: The entirely avoidable tragedy of COVID-19 vaccines and pregnant women watoday.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from watoday.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Age and
The Sydney Morning Herald have launched Examine, a new weekly science newsletter written by national science reporter Liam Mannix. The sixth instalment is below and you can sign up for free here.
Medicine has a long history of systematically excluding women from trials of potentially life-saving drugs.
We know vaccines are safe and effective for men and women. We don’t have those answers for pregnant women.
Credit:Pool
Now pregnant women find themselves excluded from the life-saving benefits of a COVID-19 vaccination. Because they were not part of clinical trials, we cannot know with certainty if vaccines are safe and effective for them.