A community task force is tackling an epidemic of babies being born addicted to pain killers. Members met at Lee Memorial Hospital Cape Coral campus Friday.
Health professionals and lawmakers statewide have been trying to get a handle on this proliferating and heartbreaking problem.
Michelle Waddell is the assistant director of neonatal services at Lee Memorial, which has been caring for many of these babies. She says helping infants through withdrawal has been a difficult task.
“It’s hard,” she says. “It’s very hard because you are watching a baby who had no choice in what’s going to happen to them go through withdrawal. And I don’t know if you’ve seen anyone go through withdrawal as an adult, but it’s painful. It’s painful to withdraw as an adult and it’s painful to withdraw as a baby.”
Among many of things discussed at the meeting, was how a series of initiatives aimed at reducing prescription medication abuse among pregnant women is going.
Waddell says it’s hard to tell whether the initiatives have curbed the number of addicted babies. However, she says the effort has at least brought light to the problem.
“More people are aware of it than they were two years ago,” she says. “Just to see 30 people come again for the third meeting--that we saw no drop off in attendance, that we see this huge commitment to do whatever they can do to educate and get the word out and really prevent this epidemic from continuing.”
Southwest Florida is one of the areas with the highest rates of prescription drug abuse among pregnant women. State lawmakers and law enforcement officials have been cracking down on so called “pill mills” in an effort to curb prescription medication abuse in the state.
Experts in the task force reported young women ages 15 to 17 were are the highest risk for abusing prescription drugs during a pregnancy.
