In developing-country hospitals, an old, low-cost method works best

In developing-country hospitals, an old, low-cost method works best

Karl Wilson
Agence France Press
Manila

Every day at the Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in central
Manila, dozens of women can be found lying on the floor, their
new-born babies wrapped in a pouch of cloth and strapped to their
chest.

Some 70-100 babies are born every day at the 700-bed maternity
hospital, around 15 of them premature or with a low birth-weight.
So, with only 14 incubators at the hospital and the weakest
children needing several days' stay, incubator space is at a
premium.

With no money to buy new incubators, the hospital five years
ago began using the so-called Kangaroo Mother Care method which
involves putting only the very weakest babies in mechanical
incubators and swaddling the rest with their mothers.

Pioneered by a hospital in Bogota, Colombia, in 1979, the
method has spread around the developing world, being used in
hospitals in some 40 countries, and is being seriously looked at
in the United States and in Europe.

Since the programme was adopted in 1999, the Manila hospital
has seen a dramatic 30 percent fall in deaths among low birth-
weight babies, said Dr Socorro Mendoza, who heads the programme
here.

The babies' heart-beat and temperature remain much more stable
when they are with their mothers and they tend to gain weight
faster and go home a lot quicker than those in incubators, she
said. The human incubators feed and stimulate the babies, which
the mechanical ones cannot do.

The results of the programme have been so positive that the
hospital has now begun training seven other government hospitals
in Manila in the method, Mendoza said.

Improving child healthcare is considered crucial in this
country of 84 million people, where the infant mortality rate
stands at 19.7 per 1,000 live births. In most developing
countries 17 out of 1,000 babies born alive die within the first
few weeks of life, according to data published in the Manila-
based Medical Observer.

The predominantly Roman Catholic country has one of the
highest population growth rates in Asia averaging 2.3 percent
annually which is around 5,000 births a day.

Many of these babies are premature low-weight babies which,
according to the World Health Organization's definition, are
babies born weighing less than 2,500 grams (about 100 ounces).

"Caring for these babies puts a tremendous strain on the
public health system of poor countries like the Philippines," Dr.
Mendoza told AFP.

"In developed countries these babies are put in incubators,
which are expensive and remain in the neo-natal intensive care
unit for months.

"What makes the Kangaroo Mother Care programme such a godsend
for countries like ours is that we simply go back to nature at
very little cost.

"Like the marsupial the programme is named after, baby and
mother should be together as one," she said.

kw/pcj/th

Health-Philippines-population-babies
AFP

GetAFP 2.10 -- AUG 15, 2004 09:41:50