The boy, born weighing 2.6 pounds, died in the incubator. His wife, Abuwa Kristien, gave birth to twins. Pastor Kubyes Abuwaka lives in the northern Yopogoon district. "It creates a link to my child and brings me closer with my wife" "I have been doing kangaroo care with my wife for a month and a half," says Abuwaka. It's a pilot program to educate mothers and fathers in a technique not widely known in the country.Īndrew Caballero-Reynolds for NPR At home with a newborn daughter, Abuwa Kristien helps her husband, Kubyes Abuwaka, hold the child in the kangaroo care position. This intensive care unit is under the guidance of pediatrician Dr. In the ward, referred to by the World Health Organization as a mother-infant ICU, the mother is available to the baby around the clock. In 2019 with the help of UNICEF, the University Hospital Medical Center at Treichville in Abidjan, the largest city in the country, opened its first kangaroo care ward. By comparison, the average infant mortality rate in industrialized countries was 4 deaths per 1,000 births the U.S. One of the countries that has started to encourage this practice is Ivory Coast, where in 2019 the infant mortality rate for children under 12 months was 59 deaths per 1,000 births. The child's mother is taking a class on kangaroo care in a room next door. Fathers are being recruited as well – babies don't care which parent is the kangaroo.Īndrew Caballero-Reynolds for NPR A nurse holds one of Kunoe Zamia's quadruplets - a daughter - as she is placed in incubator in the newborn intensive care unit at the Ivory Coast's University Hospital Medical Center at Treichville. Since 1983, the practice has slowly spread around the world – for low-weight full-term babies as well as preemies and in wealthy nations as well as resource-poor countries. UNICEF, recognizing the potential of kangaroo care, began distributing information on the technique worldwide.Īccording to a study by the World Health Organization, starting kangaroo parental care immediately after birth has the potential to save up to 150,000 infant lives each year. They presented their results that year at a UNICEF conference: The babies in kangaroo care sleep more, and cry less, than those in incubators. The researchers published their results in the 1983 Spanish language journal Curso de Medicina Fetal. The body warmth of a parent also helps control the baby's temperature. Kangaroo care works, researchers believe, because the infants pick up heartbeat and breathing rhythms from the parents' bodies, helping to stabilize their own heartbeat and breathing. The Colombian researchers found that parent-child snuggling had benefits similar to incubators. But resource-poor countries have precious few incubators, and babies were dying for lack of technology. They were hoping to find a way to reduce the country's high death rate for premature infants - approximately 70% at the time.įormerly, these premature babies were placed in incubators - when they were available - to control the infants' temperatures, provide an optimal amount of oxygen and keep them away from disturbing loud noise and bright lights. In 1978, physician researchers Edgar Rey Sanabria and Héctor Martínez-Gómez introduced the technique at the maternity ward of the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Bogota, Colombia. Kangaroo care, in effect, turns parents into pseudo-incubators. The technique is especially valuable in low-resource areas of the world that may be short on medical technology, including incubators. The name conjures up the way that kangaroo moms hold their offspring in their pouch. In other words: When a baby is born prematurely, a good way to help the baby survive and thrive is simply to hold it close to a parent's naked chest. The World Health Organization offered a similar perspective last November, advising "immediate skin to skin care for survival of small and preterm babies." Reviewing 31 trials that involved over 15,000 infants, the new study noted a reduction in childhood mortality by approximately a third among those who experienced kangaroo care starting within 24 hours of birth. It's the latest affirmation of skin-to-skin care for small and preterm babies to reduce the risk of infection and mortality. Kangaroo care received a ringing endorsement in a study published in the British Medical Journal this week.
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