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The babies paying the price of cultural tradition:
It's estimated that more than half of Pakistani-heritage couples
in Britain are in cousin marriages.
Now community leaders are confronting the troubling medical risks, writes SUE REID
Tahira Naqvi, 40, who lives in Bradford, lost her first baby after marrying cousin
Babies born in cousin marriages can suffer from ‘recessive’ genetic disorders
Pakistani and South Asian heritage are disproportionately affected
Tahira volunteered with Born In Bradford project to help stop death and illness.
The Born In Bradford Study found that half the city’s babies born each year are to Pakistani-heritage mothers. Like Tahira, two-thirds of these women are married either to first or second cousins, a fact which heightens the risk of their offspring dying or having disabilities.
Yet despite the health dangers, it is estimated that 55 per cent of Pakistani-heritage couples — like Tahira and her husband in Bradford — are in cousin marriages.
Distressingly, many surviving children of the couples involved have physical or mental problems.
These include blindness, deafness, blood ailments such as thalassemia — which can make sufferers anaemic — heart or kidney failure, lung or liver ailments, and myriad complex neurological or brain disorders.
Doctors working with the Born In Bradford study have in the past identified 140 different gene disorders among local children, compared with 20 to 30 you would expect to find among the general population.
