Call for campaign to tackle alcohol in pregnancy

There is “no safe amount and no safe time” during pregnancy to drink alcohol, given an estimated 600 babies are born here each year with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), a specialist in public health medicine has warned.

Mary T O’Mahony said pre-natal alcohol exposure can cause “irreversible damage” to the developing fetal brain. Despite the potentially dire consequences, there was “unfortunately a large element of denial about the prevalence of FAS”, she said. Previously, Adrienne Foran, a consultant paediatrician at the Rotunda Hospital, told a Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children that the issue of FAS was “the elephant in the room”.

Ireland featured among five countries with the highest prevalence rates of FAS in a review published in The Lancet journal in January. Other countries included South Africa, Italy, Croatia, and Belarus. There are an estimated 40,000 people in Ireland living with FAS.