Ministry of health to assess state of neonatal care units

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Ministry of Health has started assessing the state of neonatal units in the country to ensure they are up to standard.

According to Dr Julius Otim, a child health advisor in the ministry, one of the challenges they are establishing in the on-going assessment is the fact that not many have trained to take care of the babies born too soon. He said it’s just recently that they have resolved to retool medical workers right from the lower health facilities to regional referrals.

Speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday ahead of the Prematurity day national celebrations for Wednesday, Otim says that once the assessment is done, the ministry is planning to deploy trained health workers in centres at the regional referral hospitals where they will be exposed to real cases and handling the different challenges that the premature babies report with.

He adds that a number of donors have bought equipment like incubators and warmers which will only be installed in hospitals once training is done.

Dr. Joyce Moriku Kaducu, the Health Minister in- charge of Primary Health Care said that even as 75% of deaths can be preventable by simple interventions like equipping mothers with knowledge of how to deal with small babies during antenatal care clinics and ensuring deliveries are made in hospitals, they still have a huge number of babies develop complications related to premature births.

Earlier this year, the Ministry came under criticism when photos of babies among them premature congested at the neonatal unit of Kawempe National Referral hospital.

Then, the Ministry promised that the ward would be expanded to cater for the increasing number. However, when asked for an update on the expansion plan, Minister Moriku said that they had resolved to ensure that grass-root facilities too can handle some cases instead of overcrowding the centre.

She said even as there are operational Neonatal Intensive Care Units across regional referral hospitals, many babies were being referred to Kawempe either because of broken-down equipment or lack of human resource.

Moriku says the on-going assessment will give them a way forward because expansion of the ward at Kawempe alone may not help. 27 facilities have so far been selected for assessment which ends in December.

However, as this happens, there is an estimated 27 neonatal deaths in every 1,000 live births in Uganda currently.

The risk factors for having a premature baby, Dr Placid Mihayo, a senior Reproductive Health Officer with the Ministry says is delivering too soon or too late, poor nutrition, having untreated conditions like diabetes and HIV among others.

Globally, 15million babies are born prematurely every year of which over a million die.

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