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​Occupational Health, Vanderbilt Environmental Health and Safety (VEHS) and Vanderbilt Infection Control and Prevention have safeguards in place to help you protect your unborn baby while you work at Vanderbilt.

Typically, there is no serious complication for a pregnant woman or her baby from exposure to a person with Parvovirus B19, or "Fifth" disease. About 50% of women are already immune to Parvovirus B19, so these women and their babies are protected from infection and illness. Even if a woman is susceptible and gets infected with Parvovirus B19, she usually experiences only a mild illness. Likewise, her unborn baby usually does not have any problems attributable to a Parvovirus B19 infection.

Respiratory Syncytial Virus or RSV is one of the many cold-type upper respiratory infections that most of us acquire during the cold and flu season. For premature or medically-frail infants, the infection could become very serious, even fatal.  RSV is a paramyxovirus and there are 2 types, A and B.

VRE (Vancomycin Resistant Enterocci) and MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus) are common in hospitals. Staph is a normal bacteria on human skin and Enterocci are normal bacteria in the human bowel. Patients who have been hospitalized for long periods develop resistant bacteria as a result of exposure to many antibiotics or the hospital environment. In recent years resistant organisms have become very common in the community and patients often bring them into the hospital.


 
 Cytomegalovirus, or CMV, is a herpes virus that most women of child-bearing age have already acquired.

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a virus that can be transmitted to a developing child before birth. CMV infection is usually harmless and rarely causes illness in adults.

It's normal to be concerned about exposure to chemicals while being pregnant. There's an exposure control plan to protect all workers while at work.