Pregnant women can have Covid vaccines

Dear Editor,

I have had drilled into my head, when I was knee high to a grasshopper, that one shouldn’t have a lil boy do a big man’s job. Then with that crossing blood-barrier, reinforced it was with, clowns should never be allowed out of the confines of a circus.

Enter Dr. Narine Singh, the CMO( Chief Moron Officer) who by now would have had more positions than a washed up porn star, on the elementary matter of  Covid vaccination in pregnancy.

Firstly, he advised they can’t have it. Then after night’s sleep, he advised they can have it. Then he reverses that decision to the former. But that soon changed after a night of ethanol consumption with the Freedom House Clueless to, they can have it but they need to speak with their doctor, providing said doctor isn’t the baby daddy. And from these many contortions right in front our very eyes, the clueless doctor whose brain has long retired, was being forced to twist, turn and summersault like a teenage ballerina.
So once again I have to educate the Covid Clueless, who know not that they know not.

Firstly, pregnant women are immunosuppressed hence at high risk for severe Covid and death. Why? The human body isn’t stupid. Just like the immune system would see a transplant kidney as foreign hence rejects it, it would rightly see the developing foetus as foreign because it is foreign.
As a result, to ensure the immune-system doesn’t reject the transplanted kidney, doctor would prescribe immunosuppressant medications, for the kidney recipient. Likewise, to ensure the pregnant woman doesn’t reject the developing foetus, nature suppresses her immune system, putting her at risk for severe infections to protect the parasitic foetus.

But the vaccines were not tested on pregnant woman? That’s absolutely true but what is also true is that during the clinical trials, which included women, many became pregnant with no demonstrable adverse effects to the foetus. Even though this was quasi-trial in pregnancy, the fact that the Covid vaccines were demonstrably safe in pregnancy along with the risk posed to mothers from Covid, WHO and all major Obstetric Societies advised vaccination with approved vaccines.

Further, data coming out from the United States, where more than 130,000 pregnant women have had a COVID-19 vaccine (using Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna vaccines), has not raised any safety concerns. Furthermore, 4,000 pregnant women in Scotland have received a COVID-19 vaccine with no adverse effects recorded.

Admittedly, further studies in pregnancy will provide more information on how effective the vaccine is in pregnancy, and on pregnancy outcomes after vaccination. But the fact is, there have not been any signals to suggest safety concerns so far.

What if the pregnant woman has young children? Well this poses a potential problem. Firstly, young child(<12yrs) are not indicated for vaccination. Secondly, young children commonly have asymptomatic or mild Covid hence can unwittingly infect their mothers. In such cases, WHO and all major Obstetrics Societies have also advised vaccination to mitigate this.

Now back to the PPP and Dr. Narine Singh. Undoubtedly, the aforementioned matters are of Public Health and Obstetrics, for which the relevance would soon be made clear.

In response to a letter I penned highlighting Dr. Singh’s paucity of qualifications for the position of CMO, he rushed to Facebook with incontinent urgency to post that he undertook a Masters degree in Public Health, from a UK university. Further, he stated that he has a Masters degree in Obstetrics & Gynaecology from UG. Now this is the relevance. These matters are of elementary Public Health and Obstetric Medicine, yet the man who claimed to have masters in both specialties can’t get it right. Now you be the judge but my position is unchanged, the Guyana Medical Council website supports it, and my sources are adamant. It’s up to him to prove me wrong by providing his certificates.

But my intention is not to embarrass the clueless doctor but moreso to highlight the dangers of having square pegs in round holes. Such a practice is generally dangerous but potential deadly in the field of medicine.

Regards

Dr Mark Devonish MBBS MSc. Med. Ed. FRCP(Edin)  FRCP

Consultant Acute Medicine

Nottingham University Hospital

UK