EXPECTING TRAVEL ADVICE:Individual doctors may offer different opinions on how careful pregnant mothers should be when it comes to travel, the Tropical Medicines Bureau (TMB) points out.
Contributing to the debate, the bureau has produced a free guidelines fact sheet to help in deciding whether that holiday or business trip overseas is safe for mother and the unborn baby.
"The fact sheet covers everything from the best and safest times to travel during pregnancy to immunisations when pregnant and healthcare overseas advice to travelling to malaria regions," it says. The fact sheet is available from www.tmb.ie
SPORTING DENTAL CHANCE:One in four children will suffer a dental trauma before the age of 15, many of which occur during participation in organised sports, according to the Irish Dental Association (IDA).
It has launched a safety campaign, entitled No Gumshield - No Game, which is aimed at reducing incidents of oral sports injury among children and to encourage parents to play their part in helping to protect children's teeth before they return to the school playing fields.
Dr Edward Cotter, Irish Dental Association, says: "While we encourage children to participate in school sports we need to ensure that they are adequately protected when doing so. Shin-pads and helmets are now widely regarded as essential sports kit and we need to see a well-fitted gumshield worn whenever a child is playing sports."
PAIN RELIEF:The University of Ulster (UU) has said that two of the world's leading experts on pain management have teamed up to conduct a series of research projects at its Centre for Rehabilitation Research.
Prof Kathleen Sluka, director of the Neurophysiology of Pain Laboratory, University of Iowa, and Prof Deirdre Walsh from UU's Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Research Institute will investigate the effects of electrical stimulation on pain relief. Sluka is an internationally recognised leader in the field of pain management research. Both Sluka and Walsh specialise in the mechanisms of action of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) for pain relief.