SCANDAL OF BABIES BORN DRUG ADDICTS

Babies born to drug addicts are having to spend the first weeks of
their lives going cold turkey.

The problem of newborn drug addicts is growing, with Sunderland Royal
Hospital having to treat more than one youngster a week in the
neonatal unit.

Babies have to be put on the same withdrawal programme used for
addicts.

They are given morphine to calm them down, and to help gradually wean
them off the substances they were used to getting when they were in
the womb.

Pam Jack, neonatal unit manager and practitioner, said: "When these
babies are born they go through a horrific time because the drugs have
just stopped.

"It's one of the worst things I've seen here - to see these gorgeous
babies going through that.

"They just scream and scream. They do not feed well, they have
terrible cases of diarrhoea, they do not sleep, they sweat. It's
exactly the same as cold turkey."

Every month the unit sees four to six babies who are suffering from
drug withdrawal.

Doctor Sam Richmond, neonatologist at the hospital, said: "It's
something we have noticed increasing over the last three or four years.

"We only see the short-term effects, but we cannot expect the
long-term effects to be very good. The short-term outlook can be quite
upsetting.

"The amount of drugs or the mixture that the mother takes does not
necessarily correlate with how ill the baby is. Mothers on really
quite small amounts can have babies who are quite seriously affected."

As well as the symptoms of cold turkey, babies born to drug-using
mothers have often not grown fully and have problems feeding.

If a mother does not admit to taking drugs, it is often picked up in
routine urine tests at the antenatal unit.

Social services are immediately involved, and many drug-using mothers
go home without their babies.

Pam said: "Sometimes babies go home with young girls who are on drugs
but are living with their parents. The parents are responsible, and
they want their daughter to come off drugs and will watch her and the
baby 24 hours a day.

"But a lot of them are assessed by social services and found to be
lacking in parental skills and unwilling to work with the social worker."

The numbers of registered users accessing help in Sunderland has risen
from 786 in 2005/06 to 1,020 during the past year.