**sign this petition to get strep B test made routine in the NHS**

[fairylights]

this is a petition on the downing st website asking for the test for group B strep to be a routine test for all pregnant mums..
i am no expert on this but it sounds like a good idea to me!
petitions.pm.gov.uk/groupbstrep/

yet another postcode lottery that we have to go though in this country.

free healthcare is limited by how much is in the pot

it is not bottomless and therefore it cannot be offered routinely, when the test is not even that reliable

it is not a postcode lottery

it is a blanket decision across the UK

the thing is the test is offered if you know about it and ask your mw for it. i have known loads of women ask for it after finding out about it and not one of them has been refused. so whether you get it seem to depend on whether you have heard about it by word of mouth, on the internet or whatever cos you can bet it won't be the healthcare professionals that inform you about it.

well i know people who have been offered it routinely....

tbh i think it would make most sense if women were routinely tested when they went into labour as it can come and go. my consultant told me that was the best time to test or at the time of induction/booking in for c-section.

I'm not sure that it should be a routine test if I'm honest. I believe it should be offered to women if they are worried about it, and women should be informed of the risks of both treating and not treating, diagnosing and not diagnosing.

The US have been the trailblazers on the GBS issue, it is a routine test over there, and routinely 'treated' with antibiotics during labour. And as a pp said, they have seen no improvement in the transmission rates or of the mortality rates of those babies affected. It is important to remember that prophylatic treatment for GBS is not benign. Antibiotic usage and overusage should not be taken lightly. Here is a good article about some of the problems encountered in the US due to routine antibiotic administration during labour.

I totally support treatment for women with known risk factors (PROM, prematurity, etc) or who are worried about the issue. It is something else that should be a choice. I think that test should be offered just as antenatal screenings are - most low risk women will not opt for invasive testing such as amnio, for example. Those women should, I believe, have the OPTION of abx in labour.

But the test is imprecise, the treatment confining and could cause futher problems, personal and societal, and the outcomes unfortunately not dramatically improved.

I don't wish to marginalise anyone with personal experience of GBS, it is a major problem in a newborn, and I feel for anyone who had to go through the trauma of losing their child to GBS, or having their baby in the NICU.

Blanket testing and treatment, though? It may not be the answer...

in taht case nappyaddict, why campaign for routine antenatal testing?

no, MWs cannot offer it to everyone routinely so they don;t tell everyone about it

as the test is not that accurate

they might have been offered it as they were at risk

rohan, excellent post

the person i am talkin about did not knowingly have any risks that she can think of. what might these be? and would she have known about them?

why campaign for routine testing? cos not everyone knows someone who has heard about it. not everyone has access to sites like mumsnet to find out about it. many people have never heard of it so wouldn't ever think of asking to be tested.

I was diagnosed as having GBS when pregnant with dd1. It was picked up during a swab for thrush. I had antibiotics in labour and she was still unwell after birth and need antibiotics. With dd2 I was tested and the test showed negative but still had antibiotics in labour and dd2 was ill after birth and spent a few days in SCBU having antibiotics. This pregnancy tests have also been negative but I will still be treated as having GBS. Current NHS testing is very unreliable and would therefore be a waste of money.

the campaign is for reliable testing though.

nappy, we are going round in circles ! routine testing is counterproductive as the HVS test is not accurate enough

have a read of the gbss.org site about risk factors

as i said the campaign is for reliable testing so i assume the other one you mentioned although it doesn't mention a specific test.

teh enriched culture medium is the more reliable and vastly more expensive test.

did you read what maxbear posted earlier about the perinatal mortality rates not being different where GBS is routinely tested for?

it is not neccesarily a good thing to test routinely if it does not change mortality rates

imo this probably means that mortality rates are not significantly different. not that they aren't different full stop.

i doubt the government will plough millions into the NHS for this to become routine

i'll tell you something that will affect perinatal mortality rates , IMO, more drastically than GBS testing: more midwives

and the government are not doing anything about that

Unfortunately the test results take about 48 hours to come back so testing at the onset of labour is not an option.

I personally believe that you should treat the women who are in pre term labour (before 37weeks), women who have had babies with previous neonatal infections, women who have high temperatures in labour, women whose waters break before labour starts (if interval is likely to be 18 hours or more between waters going and birth) and women who have gbs in the urine at any stage of pregnancy. The rcog guidelines on gbs state that someone who has had a swab with no other risk factors should be OFFERED antibiotcs, not strongly recommended to have them. These guidelines are reviewed regularly and come from several different research papers on the subject.

When I was pregnant with my first child and had a positive gbs swab I did an awful lot of reading in to the subject to make a truly informed decision. I can't remember exact figures but it was something like this 1:1000 will have a minor reaction to antibiotics 1:10,000 women will have a severe reaction to them. 1:100,000 will die from a severe reaction to them. Now if a woman in labour has an anaphylactic reaction to abx then there is a good chance that her baby will not survive or will be very ill when born. It is one of those things though that you would have to treat a certain number of hundreds or thousands of women to save one baby and of course everyone would go for it if there were no side effects or other risks, but unfortunately there are.

Funnily enough when I first found out I had had a gbs swab I was going to go straight for abx in labour. It was the consultant obstetrician who suggested to me that if I had no further risk factors at the time then having antibiotics would not make all that much difference. I did decide not to have a homebirth though as I had originally planned, so that if I developed a temperature in labour I could have immediate antibiotics.

but i imagine the result could be found out almost immediately - they just aren't. if that's not the case i can't imagine why a consultant would say it's the best time to be tested for it.

i don;t thikn so, i think they have to grow the result, and it takes more than a few minutes

also, it would mean staffing path. labs 24 hours , 7 days a week.

lulumama - i agree. more midwives and better care is needed. that is why i signed this petition as well.

oh hang on i don't think i linked to the right one.

GBS needs to be cultured and results can be ready in 24 hours but may not be seen for 48 hours.