Mothers and babies matter: Pregnancy research funding cut

“It’s about saving the lives of mothers and their babies: That’s why we get up every morning, that’s why this is so important.” That is how Louise Kenny reacted in 2015 when she learned that the pregnancy research centre she led had won a major international award.

No crowing, no back-slapping, no self-congratulatory tone from the then professor of obstetrics at University College Cork. Just a simple explanation of the work of the Irish Centre for Foetal and Neonatal Translation Research (Infant), based at UCC and the Cork University Maternity Hospital. It had won the award from the American Heart Association, for ground-breaking work on pre-eclampsia, a life-threatening complication of late pregnancy.