Maternal health refers to the health of the women during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period.  Each stage should be a positive experience, ensuring women and their babies reach their full potential for health and well-being. Prenatal care includes screening and diagnostic tests and they can provide valuable information about the baby's health. Understand the risks and benefits.
The obstetrician in partnership with the laboratory has tools that can contribute to maternal health, such as:
• Prenatal screening tests which can identify potential genetic disorders and diagnostic tests, and,
• Diagnostic test, which is the only way to be sure of a diagnosis. 

Learn in this episode what are the strategies to minimize the risk of alloimmunization in the maternal population and what are the recommendations for antenatal and post-delivery care testing.

About Our Speaker: 

Professor Robert Flower is a national leader in R&D at the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood. He has been teaching and supervising hospital and university blood banks for over 30 years. He has published over 400 publications with over 4000 citations and has helped over 50 students complete post-graduate research. In 2018, Dr. Flower was granted the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence at Queensland University of Technology. The following year, he was awarded the Peter Schiff Award from the Australia and New Zealand Society for Blood Transfusion. Dr. Flower’s current interests include translating genetics to routine investigations, molecular modeling of the structures defining blood groups, and evidence-based modeling of the risk of transfusion-transmission for various agents.