内容摘要：“Three of them were lucky; there was minimal or no organ damage at the time we found them,” he said, adding the fourth has kidney failure and liver damage “because he went so many years without knowing he was diabetic.”

“Three of them were lucky; there was minimal or no organ damage at the time we found them,” he said, adding the fourth has kidney failure and liver damage “because he went so many years without knowing he was diabetic.”

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Midwife Jennie Joseph touched Husna Mixon’s pregnant belly, turned to the 7-year-old boy in the room with them and asked: “Want to help me check the baby?”With his small hand on hers, Joseph used a fetal monitor to find a heartbeat. “I hear it!” he said. A quick, steady thumping filled the room.

It was a full-circle moment for the midwife and patient, who first met when Mixon was an uninsured teenager seeking prenatal care halfway through her pregnancy with the little boy. Joseph has been on a decades-long mission to usher patients like Mixon safely into parenthood through a nonprofit that relies on best practices she learned in Europe, a place that experts say“I consider maternal health to be in a state of emergency here,” said Joseph, a British immigrant. “It’s more than frustrating. It’s criminal.”The Biden administration,

in this election year, acknowledges the U.S. has one of the highest rates of any wealthy nation — hovering around 20 per 100,000 live births overall and 50 for Black moms, according to the World Health Organization and U.S. health officials. Several European countries have rates in the single digits.shows the vast majority of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. Public health experts

on a range of problems, such as inequities in getting needed health care, systemic racism, at times poor-quality medical care and a rise in chronic health conditions among women of childbearing age.

Solutions abroad can be translated to the U.S., experts believe. For example, many European countries make it easier to get prenatal and postpartum care that involves both doctors and non-physicians like midwives, said Dr. Laurie Zephyrin, a senior vice president at the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund who studies maternal care across nations.“We just prayed together and talked about how it would be,” Andrews said of their phone calls before and after his transplant. He said Looney advised “to just stay strong and that’s what I’m doing.”

Doctors said Andrews’ pig kidney turned pink and quickly began producing urine in the operating room, and since then has cleared waste normally with no signs of rejection. Andrews spent the week after his discharge in a nearby Boston hotel for daily checkups but is expected to return home to New Hampshire soon.NYU transplant surgeon Dr. Robert Montgomery said patients like those in Mass General’s pilot study could be “the sweet spot” for early xenotransplants — not yet too sick from years of dialysis but unlikely to survive long enough for a human transplant.

“Those are the patients where it really makes sense for them to try something else,” said Montgomery. His hospital is one of two that will be part of United Therapeutics’ clinical trial later this year, which will include similar patients.It’s too early to know how Andrews will fare but if the pig kidney were to fail, Riella said he’d still qualify for a human transplant and, now deemed inactive on the transplant list, wouldn’t lose his “waiting time” that helps determine priority.