Director General of Health Services Dr Atul Goel visited the Safdarjung Hospital here on Tuesday.
During his visit, Goel along with Dr Vandana Talwar, Medical Superintendent of Safdarjung Hospital, inspected the Mother-Newborn Intensive Care Unit (M-NICU) for outborn babies in the Department of Paediatrics.
World over, it is an established practice to separate the sick new-borns from their mothers and shift them to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). So the mothers stay at home or wait in the hospital lounge. Consequently, only few are able to come to the new-born units to attend to their babies. They are allowed to do this only intermittently as a visitor and not as a caregiver.
As a result babies do not get much needed, their mother’s breast feed and the Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) (skin to skin contact with mother). Often these babies are at higher risk of cross infections due to low nurse baby ratio in low-middle income countries.
The Department of Paediatrics at Safdarjung Hospital is the first tertiary care centre in the country to initiate a M-NICU services for out born babies in 35 bedded Level 3 (Tertiary level) NICU.
Lauding the hospital, Dr Goel, said, “Creating M-NICU at Safdarjung Hospital is an effective step towards respectful care of mother-baby dyad”.
The Medical Superintendent said, “To enable mothers to be with their sick new-borns 24X7, mothers are being provided basic facilities which include food, beds, washrooms etc. within the neonatal intensive care unit (Mother-NICU concept)”.
Dr Ratan Gupta, Head of Department of Paediatrics said,” Keeping mother and her sick baby together increases the opportunity for prolonged and effective KMC, which is a proven intervention to reduce mortality and early and sustained breast milk feeding”.