Out of 20 million premature and underweight babies born each year, four million die. Most are in developing countries. Solving this problem is not just a short-term humanitarian effort, it also constitutes low-hanging fruit in the international development field. When infant mortality goes down, we tend to see population sizes decrease as well.
Poverty can be confoundingly complex, but for these infants the proximal threat is clear: Hypothermia. Without the body fat reserves to regulate their own temperature, babies need external heating. Kangaroo care (skin-to-skin contact with a mother) promotes breast feeding and warms babies to the right temperature but can only ever be part of the solution when mothers have competing survival demands of work and other children.
The incubators we see in well-supported hospitals are expensive, but the real barrier to access is infrastructure. Incubators require a continuous power supply. Continue reading
I need a new disease. Not for me, not exactly, but for my son. Instead of stories about two mystery solvers named Sam and Lydia, he wants me to regale him with chronicles of ailments, with tales of viruses and bacteria.
December 2 – 6
