Laerdal LGH CarePlus - Manual (Page 2)

Every year about 15 million babies are born prematurely. 1 One million of them die
of preterm related complications while another one million die of causes where
preterm is a risk factor, and over one million of the survivors develop some degree
of impairment.
1 Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) consists of continuous skin-to-skin
(StS) contact, providing temperature support and facilitating breastfeeding. It also
helps to prevent infection and enables earlier discharge.
2 Near universal coverage
of KMC could save 450,000 newborn lives every year. 3,4
Report titled Consensus to Kangaroo Mother Care Acceleration, published after the KMC summit
held in Istanbul, Nov 2013 summarises the barriers for KMC uptake as follows:
• KMC is incorrectly perceived as a practice for preterm in low-income countries only, as a next
best alternative to incubator care.
• Many health care providers (at all levels) do not know or do not believe in the benefits of KMC,
and lack the skills for effective implementation.
• Cultural and social norms related to mother and newborn practice make community uptake of
KMC challenging.
• Human resources for health required for KMC have been lacking, and the role of mothers and
communities has been overlooked.
• KMC has not been included in many country level government newborn agendas and policies.
A KMC ward, Malawi
An Integrated Approach
KMC implementation remains extremely poor worldwide despite its introduction more than 30
years ago. An integrated approach - that involves all the stakeholders of the system may have the
most potential for an impact.
Learning from the success of Helping Babies Breathe, the integrated approach works on the same
philosophy that - ‘Training drives therapy’. Below illustration explains the integrated approach.
Educator
Health System
Mother Health Worker
Family
Awar
eness
Counselling & Suppor
t
KMC is unknown to the community
Awareness about the therapy value
needs to be increased Health worker require to be
skilled in essential newborn
care for small babies
Health workers struggle to convince
and motivate mothers to adopt KMC
They also miss tools of demonstration
User experience can be a great barri-
er to effective KMC practice reducing
desirability.
Training Programs
Essential Care for Every Baby
Essential Care for Small Babies
Training & Motivation Tools
PreemieNatalie
MamaBreast
CarePlus
Communication Media
Better design of films, posters, etc
CarePlus: Helping Babies Grow
Can a KMC wrap add value to
the integrated approach?
Education
& Skill
Training Programs
New training programs - Essential Care for Every Baby and Essential Care for Small Babies
developed by the American Academy of Paediatrics according to the WHO guidelines covers
the period after birth through until discharge. Skin-to-skin care and kangaroo mother care are
important elements in the curriculum of the training programs.
Training Tools
To facilitate effective learning through simulation, Laerdal has developed the PreemieNatalie - a
preterm simulator and MamaBreast - breast feeding simulator. Both the simulators are not only
very effective for training health workers in KMC but are very useful as counselling tools for
mothers as well.