Laerdal LGH CarePlus User Manual

Helping Babies Grow

CAN A

MOTHER FRIENDLY APPROACH

HELP INCREASE

THE UPTAKE AND QUALITY OF KMC ?

www.laerdalglobalhealth.com

Every year about 15 million babies are born prematurely.1 One million of them die

An Integrated Approach

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

1

of impairment.

Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) consists of continuous skin-to-skin

(StS) contact, providing temperature support and facilitating breastfeeding. It also

2

helps to prevent infection and enables earlier discharge.
of KMC could save 450,000 newborn lives every year.

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.

Near universal coverage

3,4

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.

Health worker require to be

skilled in essential newborn

care for small babies

Training Programs

Essential Care for Every Baby

Essential Care for Small Babies

Health workers struggle to convince

and motivate mothers to adopt KMC

They also miss tools of demonstration

Education

& Skill

Health Worker

Educator

Counselling

& Support

Health System

Awareness

Mother

KMC is unknown to the community
Awareness about the therapy value
needs to be increased

Communication Media

Better design of films, posters, etc

Family

User experience can be a great barri­er to effective KMC practice reducing
desirability.

Training & Motivation Tools

PreemieNatalie

MamaBreast

CarePlus

CarePlus: Helping Babies Grow

Can a KMC wrap add value to
the integrated approach?

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.

A KMC ward, Malawi