Drinks ban for pregnant women

2005-10-06 20:55

Cape Town - Some American states had passed laws banning bars and restaurants from serving alcohol to pregnant women, said an American health expert on Thursday.

Phil May, professor of sociology and community medicine at the University of New Mexico, was one of the speakers at a conference on Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), a birth defect caused by the mother drinking alcohol during pregnancy.

The effects could range from severe physical and learning disabilities to milder forms of learning difficulties and behavioural problems.

Experts said women should not drink at all during pregnancy, let alone engage in the weekend binge drinking that had made the Northern and Western Cape the areas with the highest reported FASD rates in the world.

'Server training'

May said that in New Mexico, state law banned bars and restaurants from serving liquor to pregnant women or people already drunk.

The state had also made "server training" obligatory, and a person could not work as waitress or bartender, unless he or she had a licence to serve alcohol.

He said: "They have to undergo four to five hours of education on the proper service and when it is appropriate not to serve people, for example when they're pregnant, or when they're already intoxicated."

He and colleagues had for the past five years undertaken a study to find out why pregnant women were being served alcohol, despite the law and their training.

Techniques for refusal

They had also wanted to feed these findings back into the statutory training to improve it, and to teach the staff techniques of refusing to serve people without provoking anger and without the bars losing business.

May said: "What we developed was an enhanced training specifically focused on the devastating effects of foetal alcohol syndrome, and techniques for refusal.

"When they had the training on these techniques and (on) why they should refuse for foetal alcohol syndrome, the rate of refusal went from 17% up to 35% in the first month.

"Twelve months later, the refusal rate at those trained bars was still 29%."

Preventing alcohol exposure

May said the researchers used actors, including women wearing a harness, which made them look about eight months pregnant, for the training.

He said the project had shown that health advocates could work with people they might not have considered their allies to prevent FASD or at least prevent alcohol exposure.

He said: "Many people would think that bartenders and restaurants would not be favourable to such a thing.

"But, we've found that bar owners, waitresses and bartenders want to protect the next generation and they're perfectly happy to refuse service if they feel comfortable doing it, in a way that the customer won't get angry."

May said they had developed a number of recommended approaches, including: "Are you sure you meant to order that? Have you heard about foetal alcohol syndrome?"

- SAPA