The Prenatal Diagnosis Center of the CQHCWC offers an online lecture on eugenics and birth defect prevention on Nov 16. [Photo/CQHCWC]

The Prenatal Diagnosis Center of the Chongqing Health Center for Women and Children (Women and Children's Hospital of Chongqing Medical University), or CQHCWC, in Southwest China's Chongqing, held an online lecture on eugenics and birth defect prevention on Nov 16 in an effort to improve awareness of pre-pregnancy risk prevention and further reduce the risk of birth defects.

Doctor Zhou Lan explained in detail the screening and clinical significance of carriers of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) during the lecture, which was attended by more than 130 medical workers from medical institutions at all levels inside and outside the city.

With a high population carrier rate, SMA is mainly manifested as progressive muscle weakness and muscle atrophy primarily in the proximal extremities, and has high mortality and high treatment costs. Now, scientific prenatal screening has become more crucial than treatment after the illness.

Assuming that both parents are carriers of the SMA pathogenic gene, their offspring have a 25 percent chance of being healthy, a 50 percent chance of being a carrier, and a 25 percent chance of suffering from the disease.

The lecture deepened the trainees' understanding of SMA and improved the ability of medical staff members to effectively communicate with patients, laying a solid foundation for improving the quality of SMA carrier screening.

The Prenatal Diagnosis Center of CQHCWC will provide similar online lectures every two weeks, in order to improve the service capabilities of prenatal screening, diagnosis, and intervention, and better apply prenatal diagnosis technology to clinical practice, offering better services for women in the city.