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| Jaap Vermeulen, Jacoplane in a Neonatal intensive care unit (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| English: A new mother holds her baby who was born 10 weeks premature at Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
In the United States, some very premature babies are swaddled in sterile plastic wrap to keep to their body temperature from dropping dangerously. Now a study of newborns in Zambia suggests that the technique can be duplicated cheaply and effectively in poorer countries – using simple plastic bags.
“These are regular plastic bags, similar to grocery bags,” said an author of the study, Dr. Waldemar A. Carlo, a neonatal care specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The skin of premature babies is very thin, and water evaporates quickly through it, sometimes leading to life-threatening heat loss, especially in a poor country where heat in neonatal wards can be unsteady.
In a hospital in Lusaka, Zambia, babies were placed on their mothers’ chests right after birth in typical “kangaroo care,” he said. But kangaroo care is not always enough to warm a child, and when babies were taken to be weighed or observed or because the mother fell asleep or needed medical treatment, putting them in a plastic bag before wrapping them in a blanket did a better job of keeping them warm than a blanket alone.
Taken from TODAY Saturday Edition, June 15, 2013
