NOS Newsโข
Newborn babies must get a shot with vitamin K instead of drops. According to the Health Council, that is the best way to protect babies against a shortage. Vitamin K is needed to solidify blood. Too little of it can cause bleeding, for example in the brain.
The vitamin can also be given via drops in the mouth. Nevertheless, an injection works better according to the Health Council. “Then it is immediately absorbed in the body,” says chairman Karien Stronks. “Moreover, it is one -off. It is also very easy to administer. A shot is also not dependent on parents who have to give those drops every day.”
The same advice The Health Council already gave in 2017. The Ministry of Health at the time wanted the shot A few years later Also enter, but came across resistance. The idea was that from this year all newborn babies would get the shot, but midwives resist.
They did that Among other things because of the costs, the higher workload and ensuring that the vaccination will decrease, the Royal Netherlands Organization of Midwives (KNOV) said at the time. The KNOV has not yet responded to today’s advice.
At the request of the current Ministry, the Council again investigated, hoping to find other oral alternatives. According to Stronks, those alternatives are there. For example, those drops can be administered less often, but with a higher dose. “But we do say: that is less protective than give children a puncture just after birth.”
“Nothing wrong”
One of the babies with whom a vitamin K deficiency became fatal was Louise. She died more than a year ago. De Volkskrant spoke with her parents. They want to draw attention to an invisible disorder that means that babies do not absorb vitamin K in their intestines. That condition affects dozens of babies every year, writes the newspaper, and ends deadly in some babies.
Pediatricians have also been doing their best to draw attention to invisible vitamin K problems for some time, because they know through research from other countries that the lives of those children could have been saved.
“That is a confrontational message,” says pediatrician Michiel van Wijk to de Volkskrant. He also treated Louise in the Emma Children’s Hospital in Amsterdam. “Her parents have done nothing wrong at all, the midwives and the doctors have missed nothing. According to the Dutch guidelines, there has been acting.”
Policy not optimal
Babies now receive drops of vitamin K immediately after the birth, administered by a healthcare professional. Parents can then give drops every day for the first three months themselves. A vitamin K deficiency mainly occurs in children who are breastfeeding, because bottle feeding is more vitamin K.
A surplus of vitamin K is not harmful. So it doesn’t matter if a child first gets a shot and then bottle feeding.
According to the Health Council, this existing drop policy works “not optimally”. In the Netherlands, babies get bleeding more often due to a vitamin K deficiency than in countries with a different policy. “Some babies a year have to deal with that,” says Stronks. “That can be very serious and lead to the death of a child.”
Want to know more about breastfeeding and bottle feeding? NOS on 3 took earlier A dive into the breast milk advice: