According to an Oct. 15 article on the The Copenhagen Post Online, a hospital in the famed Danish city recently opened a special unit to serve children who have been adopted from other countries.

The primary reason for the new unit in Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet is to provide a more efficient and effective means of providing medical care to children who may be suffering from conditions with which Danish doctors are not familiar:

Children adopted from overseas often bring with them illnesses rarely seen in Denmark.

DR News reports that the new out-patient department will help centralize all the medical knowledge parents of adopted foreign children need.

Freddy Karup Pedersen is a professor in international childrens illnesses and is one of the three doctors running the department.

"We're offering a coordinated effort so adoptive parents dont have to go to 117 different places to find out whats wrong," Pedersen said.

About 400 children are adopted and brought to Denmark each year.

Labels: medical_records

Posted By: Aspen/CRC 0 Comments

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has recommended hepatitis A vaccinations for anyone who will come in close contact with children who are adopted from countries where the virus is prevalent. The decision comes in the wake of the death of a 51-year-old grandmother who contracted the disease from her adopted grandchild.

"Hepatitis A is a liver disease caused by a virus, which can spread through handling a diaper or other contact with contaminated feces. Federal guidelines call for vaccinations against it for all U.S. children and for adults who travel to countries where the illness is common."

Children who are adopted internationally don't typically have recommended vaccinations until after they have arrived in the United States. Source: Associated Press

Labels: medical_records

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 0 Comments

An adoption clinic in Milwaukee, Wisconsin offers a unique service to its clients: the analyzing and interpreting of a child's medical records. One of the biggest challenges in international adoption is getting a clear understanding of a child's medical condition.

"'Every country has its own way of defining health, so we try to interpret it and tell the families what's going on,' said Inshirah Farhoud, a Pediatric Practitioner at the clinic."

Adoption workers from Russia recently visited the clinic and were pleased to see that the children were still in great health, and that the health of many had actually improved.

Read more online.

Labels: international, medical_records, adoption_clinics

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 0 Comments

Seth, an incarcerated New Mexico youth, recently wrote a letter of apology to his father. He’s trying to take responsibility for robbing his father’s house on Christmas Eve. Filmmaker Justin Hunt, however, wonders who’s taking responsibility for Seth. Hunt addresses the topic in his new film “Absent.”

“While Hunt acknowledges there are absent mothers also in the world, he said the subject of absent fathers particularly interested him because of the magnitude of the issue worldwide. Undoubtedly, he said, fathers tend to leave families more often. Farmington [New Mexico] Juvenile Detention Center Director Traci Neff sees the results every day. More than 90 percent of juveniles incarcerated at the center did not have fathers in their lives, Neff said.” [Source: Farmington (MN) Daily-Times]

Many of the young men Hunt interviewed for his film admitted they would have made different decisions if they’d had a father figure in their lives. “Absent” premiered Saturday, August 28th in Albuquerque.

 

Labels: medical_records, parenting, fathers, loss

Posted By: Stefanie Hamilton 1 Comment