A girl has been born with congenital rubella syndrome (CRS), the first such case in Taiwan in nine years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday.
The baby, born in December last year, has a smaller body and weight than average, and has hearing impairment and cataracts, the CDC said.
She was diagnosed with CRS after examinations, marking the first case in Taiwan since 2008, it added.
CDC physician Wu Pei-Yuan (吳佩圜) said the mother, who has Chinese citizenship, had only one prenatal checkup in Taiwan at about 12 weeks into her pregnancy, while the other prenatal checkups were done in China.
The baby was born in central Taiwan last year, the CDC said.
The mother had no particular medical history, but her vaccination records are unknown, Wu said, adding that the prenatal checkup in Taiwan showed a positive result for rubella IgG antibodies, so it is possible that she was infected with rubella (German measles) in the very early stages of her pregnancy.
If a woman is infected with rubella early in a pregnancy — especially in the first 12 weeks — she might be at risk of having a miscarriage or giving birth to a stillborn, or having a baby with severe birth defects, including deafness, cataracts, microcephaly (an abnormally small head), intellectual disabilities and heart defects.
Six cases of CRS — four female and two male — were reported between 2001 and this year; two indigenous, three imported from Vietnam, Indonesia and China, and one from an unknown infection source, according to CDC statistics.
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