KABUL (Pajhwok): Some mothers consider home remedies as effective in curing jaundice in babies, but doctors warn untreated jaundice may cause cerebral palsy.
These mothers say they apply white onions around the baby’s neck and put gold on the tongue and this has been effective.
Claim: Jaundice in babies can be treated with home remedies.
Verdict: Home treatment dangerous and risky.
Mothers who treated their babies at home
Feroza, 28, a resident of Ferozkoh City of Ghor province and a mother of three children, considers home remedies effective for infants having jaundice, saying all her children were born with jaundice, but she did not take any of them to a doctor for treatment.
She told Pajhwok Afghan News: “Not only me, but most of the people of this province do not take newborns to the doctor, if one gets jaundice, he/she is taken to a mullah (religious scholar) with a white onion.”
The mullah blows the onion and hangs it around the child’s neck or on the cradle until the onion is completely dried and jaundice also disappears.”
Sima, another resident of the province, said they did not take babies with jaundice to doctors, but used home remedies for their treatment.
She said: “Our grandmothers used to say that gold heals jaundice. When my first child was born, the doctors said he has jaundice and they gave him medicines, but my mother recommended rubbing a gold ring on the child tongue for 40 days. I did what she told me until the child healed.”
Soraya, a resident of Shiberghan City of Jawzjan, said she had treated her babies with jaundice with home remedies and had never seen a doctor.
“When my baby contracts jaundice, I stop eating eggs, we take such patient to the Mullah with safflower oil, which takes away the jaundice, this oil is applied to the child’s body to remove the jaundice,” she added.
Meanwhile, Hanifa, a resident of Badghis, said: “One of my daughters had jaundice. I went to a Mullah and he told me to bring a white onion. I took an onion and tied it around her neck. Thankfully she healed in 12 days.”
But a mother lost 2 children for not taking them to a doctor
Amina, a resident of Kabul who is hospitalized with her baby at the Indra Gandhi Institute of Child Health, told Pajhwok: “My daughter was born in the seventh month of my pregnancy. She was fine for two days, but then she contracted jaundice and could not suck milk. I took her to Mullah, but his condition worsened, we quickly brought her to the hospital and she was admitted.”
She said her two other children were born in third trimester and died of jaundice because she did not take them to a doctor.
She urged other mothers to take their children to the hospital earlier so they could be saved from reaching unrecoverable condition.
Doctors: Some patients brought after home treatment deteriorates their condition
Dr Agha Mohammad Shirzad, a pediatric internal medicine specialist trainer at the Indra Gandi Child Hospital said: “Jaundice is different in babies, some babies are allergic to breast milk and get jaundice, some have other causes.”
He added the presence of bacteria in the blood, the difference between the blood group of the mother and the baby, and the increase of the hemoglobin strain in the baby are among main causes of jaundice in babies.
According to him, yellow skin and eyes are symptoms of this disease.
He said, some babies contracted jaundice within 24 hours after birth; While others contracted the disease after a few days due to having blood microbes and infections.
Dr. Shirzad says newborns with jaundice should be transferred to a health center for treatment as soon as possible, otherwise the baby’s health condition will worsen.
Referring to home remedies, he said: “Some mothers take their babies with jaundice to mullahs, but jaundice in each baby is different in each family and they should not be treated the same way.”
He added that some babies were transferred to this hospital for treatment whose condition had worsened due to home treatment and even suffered from cerebral palsy, and it was impossible to treat them.
He advised families to avoid self-medication and to transfer the patient to the health center as soon as possible.
Sayed Javad Hosseini, another doctor in this hospital, said that 40 percent of babies were born with jaundice and most of them were born before nine months.
Referring to a five-day-old baby suffering from jaundice, he said: “This baby is premature, born before time. He was admitted in our hospital yesterday. Nasal paralysis would occur in the future.”
He asked mothers to test their blood group before getting pregnant and if their blood group was negative, they should get vaccinated in the 28th week of pregnancy and consult gynecologist every time they get pregnant.
sa/ma
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