Health

Child spacing is a practice in which people decide and act on when they want to have children and how often they want to have children. Child spacing provides health, social, and economic benefits for individuals, families, and communities. It is a way to make sure the baby and the mother are healthy and strong before another baby comes. Child spacing helps the mother to regain her health and helps the child to get all the attention, care, and love they deserve. A mother’s body needs time after giving birth to get her strength back before she becomes pregnant again. A woman who delivers children who are very close in age can easily become exhausted by the many pregnancies, childbirth, breastfeeding, and looking after small children. Moreover, if a baby can breastfeed longer, he or she will be healthier. The first child will have more time to grow up healthy before a new baby comes. Children benefit from more time with their mother and father. Also, child spacing enables the father to support and take time with his family. Planning when to have babies may not be widely discussed in some cultures. Some people feel that it is a decision…

On a Tuesday morning in April 2017, Hinda Omar, a Somali outreach worker with the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), learned that there were 3 children with measles in the Somali community. She recognized immediately that this could be a serious situation and affect many more children in the community. Vaccination rates for the MMR vaccine – which protects against measles, mumps and rubella – had been going down in the Minnesota Somali community over the last decade. This meant more people, especially children, were at risk of getting sick with measles. As of June 19, 2017, there have been 78 cases of measles making this Minnesota’s worst measles outbreak since 1990. Most of the cases have occurred in the Somali community in the Twin Cities area and the vast majority of the cases were not vaccinated. In 2004, the Somali community had one of the highest vaccination rates for MMR vaccine. However, after 2006, families stopped vaccinating putting many at risk. “I was worried about the community,” said Omar. “I knew the [vaccination] rates were low, and I was concerned. I did not know what an outbreak would look like in my community.” Omar has been working with the…

The measles outbreak in Minnesota is being blamed on Anti Vaccine activists who often target the Somali community with propaganda that falsely connects autism to vaccines. There are now 54 confirmed cases in Minnesota and 48 of them are unvaccinated Somali children under the age of 10. Measles is a highly infectious disease that can even be deadly. The outbreak in Minnesota started less than 6 weeks ago with one unvaccinated child and since then it has spread to 53 people in four different counties. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says “measles is so contagious that if one person has it, 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected.” The unvaccinated rate among Somali Americans started plummeting back in 2008 when the anti-vaccine community started organizing events in Somali neighborhoods that linked autism to the MMR vaccine. Prior to that, Somali children had a higher than average vaccination rate of 94% and since then that rate has dropped to 42%. That is a dangerously low vaccination rate and it is being considered an epidemic by health officials in Minnesota. That led many to ask the question, is anti-vaccine propaganda protected under the…

Most of you know that smoking cigarettes is bad for you. The smoke gets into your lungs and over time causes cancer. But you may not know that secondhand smoke – the smoke released into the air by the smoker – is bad for everyone in the room with the smoker! Breathing in secondhand smoke makes it more likely to get lung cancer and many other types of cancer. Breathing in secondhand smoke is also not good for your heart. If you live with a smoker or frequently spend time in the company of people who smoke, this article is for you! It could change your life! Secondhand smoke is the smoke a smoker breathes out and that comes from the tip of burning cigarettes, pipes, and cigars. It contains about 4,000 chemicals. Let me explain more about what secondhand smoke is and why it is so harmful. When you are sitting with a person who is smoking, you inhale the same dangerous chemicals as the smoker. The smoker will inhale only 15% of the harmful smoke into his/her lungs, the rest is blown out in to the room. Everyone in this room breathes in the secondhand smoke into their…

An outbreak that started with two brothers and their friend grew to 20 confirmed measles cases in Minneapolis. All the victims of the outbreak come from the Somali community and were not vaccinated. Health officials are tracing the outbreak back to one unvaccinated child who travelled outside the country. Minnesota Department of Health infectious disease director, Kris Ehersman said, “”This outbreak has nothing to do with being Somali. It is absolutely an outbreak that is driven by unvaccinated children and that is what the source is.” Measles is a serious disease that can lead to death. Symptoms include a high fever, cough, runny nose and watery eyes followed by a rash that typically spreads from head to the rest of the body. It is highly contagious and spreads easily by coughing, sneezing or even being in the same room with someone who has measles. Measles was eradicated in the US back in 2000 and all measles cases since then were linked to international travel. Random cases are reported around the country but are almost always linked to international travel. The last outbreak in Minnesota was in 2001. Before 2008, the vaccination rate among Somalis was considered to be slightly higher…

Women planning to get pregnant have to take steps to make sure that they are healthy. Avoiding exposure to harmful behaviors and toxins before they conceive can decrease the chance of problems during pregnancy and improve the health of their baby. Preconception Care is the care a woman receives before she gets pregnant to help promote a healthy pregnancy. Scheduling a preconception care visit with your doctor can improve the overall chances of a healthy pregnancy. Your doctor will likely recommend you to take the following steps: Develop a Plan For Your Reproductive Life This plan includes your and your husband’s plans for the number and timing of pregnancies based on your values and life goals. Sharing your life plan with your health care provider can help address any potential problems before you conceive.2 Increase Your Intake of Folic Acid Folic acid is a B vitamin (B9). It helps produce and maintain new cells. This is especially important during times when the cells are dividing and growing rapidly such as infancy and pregnancy. The United States Public Health Service recommends that all pregnant women and “women of childbearing age [15 to 44 years] in the United States who are capable…

Historically, Somalis have managed to separate their physical health from their mental well-being. The reality however is that the two are very connected. A good mental health leads to a healthy body. Unfortunately, despite this fact, Somalis have a negative connotation around the words ‘Mental Disorder’. It is a cultural bias that needs to be countered with as many resources as possible. This News Paper hopes to start the dialog and continue to report on the progress the community has made on this stigmatized issue. First and foremost, just like any other disease, mental health is a normal curve in the population distribution of any society or community. In other words, there is 1 mentally unstable person in every 7 people in almost every indexed country in the world. Different cultures have different spiritual ways to heal mental disorders but we all agree that it affects every community around the world. In today’s advanced society, doctors and scientists know so much about mental health that no one should suffer because of a stigma. It has been scientifically proven that mental disorders are usually linked to high intelligence. Some of the greatest scientists and inventors the world has seen suffered from…