World Prematurity Day 2023 Campaign

Under the SLOGAN: Small actions, BIG IMPACT: immediate skin-to-skin care for every baby everywhere

On World Prematurity Day 2023, our focus was on promoting Kangaroo Mother Care method (Kangaroo Mother Care – KMC or skin to skin).

We aimed to give parents hope that holding your child even if he is hospitalized in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is possible, and we concentrated our efforts in hospitals open to practicing the KMC, units with which we implemented Family Centered Care in the past.

The medical teams from these departments joined us at the F.I.N.E. course (Family and Infant Neurodevelopmental Care Education) organized by ARNIS since 2018 or have participated over the last 3 years in the KMC Contest.

We aligned our campaign with the strong message given by the World Health Organization (WHO-click here for the 2023 Guide) and EFCNI (European Foundation for the care of Newborn Infants – an organization we are part of) and promoted the inclusion of parents as primary caregivers in NICU and KMC practice to reducing infant mortality and morbidity.

Preterm birth is the leading cause of death in children under the age of five; each year, about 15 million babies worldwide are born preterm, that is about 1 in 10 children. [1]

Immediate skin-to-skin contact after birth between mother and infant has proven hugely beneficial for both, lowering mortality rates and instances of sepsis. [2]

Continuous and prolonged skin-to-skin contact encourages breastfeeding and breastmilk feeding and paves the way for Kangaroo Mother Care as standard care practice, thus putting the family in the centre of all neonatal and maternal care.

Images send the strongest message and the power of the example will lead other NICUs and other parents to practice skin-to-skin care with their long-hospitalized babies.

For this purpose, we organized 5 professional photo sessions with parents practicing the skin-to-skin in NICU, then installed exhibitions with artistic photos (7 large paintings 50x70cm each) for each of the 5 hospitals, we gave framed photos to the parents who participated in the photo session and donated 50 babywearing slings for parents, to continue wearing their babies on their chests also at home.

We printed and distributed 10 posters 50×70 cm with the Info-graphic: Multidisciplinary care and monitoring of the long-term hospitalized newborn that helps parents in the process of follow-up of premature newborn after hospital discharge.

Digital version available here: https://arnis.ong/project/brosuri-si-ghiduri/

Our partners were the NICU’s of: the Emergency Clinical Hospital “St. Ioan” – Bucur Maternity, Sibiu County Emergency Clinical Hospital, Satu Mare County Emergency Clinical Hospital, Miercurea Ciuc County Emergency Clinical Hospital, Târgoviște County Emergency Clinical Hospital.

Supporters of the campaign were: AstraZeneca România, NN Asigurări, Pampers România, BabyBox, Fundația Fan Courier, Natural Parenting, photographer Rareș Helici, artist Iulia Trif, doctors and nurses who helped organize the activities.

In the Neonatology Department of the Oradea County Emergency Clinical Hospital, we donated baby fingerprint sets, baby wearing systems, ARNIS key rings and bags, 25 octopuses toy and were present for Oradea’s parents due to the involvement of Adriana Irinyi, our volunteer.

The celebration in this hospital was supported by the 3.5% income tax funds from individual donors from ORADEA and by the support of PAMPERS Romania.

At the Neonatology Department 1 of the Cluj-Napoca County Emergency Clinical Hospital, we installed a photo booth that brought a lot of joy to the parents, children and medical personnel present at the Celebration dedicated to the World Prematurity Day, and we offered healthy sweets to the participants. The activities were supported in the context of the press conference dedicated to the SUS-TIN digitization project – Increase (SUS) the quality of medical-social services in Neonatal Intensive Care (TIN), and the beneficiaries later become donors (SUSȚIN) – in collaboration with the Neonatology Section 1 of Cluj-Napoca County Emergency Clinical Hospital, with the financial support of Active Citizens Fund Romania, a program financed by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through EEA Grants 2014-2021. Details here: https://sus-tin.arnis.ong/main/

We sent 25 toy-octopuses to the Neonatology Department of the Onești Municipal Hospital, and we donated 200 bed sheets to make the nest for positioning the baby in the incubator to the Bega Maternity Hospital in Timișoara.

The 2023 campaign was also supported by individual donors through the Direct Debit mechanism.

We accepted Ruxandra Luca‘s invitation for an interview on the TV show “Neața cu Răzvan și Dani” where we spoke about World Prematurity Day 2023 Campaign and about the delicate care needed by long hospitalized newborns (activity within the Pampers Preemie Campaign)

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On November 15, 2023, we participated in the “The Magic Hour in Romania” Conference. We spoke about prematurity, about the World Prematurity Day – November 17, about the importance of practicing skin-to-skin/Kangaroo Mother Care for long-term hospitalized newborns and about the progress made by the maternity hospitals where we implement the Family and Infant Neurodevelopmental Care Education curricula.

We thank our partners at the ProMAMA Center for the opportunity!

As a patient association, ARNIS has been part of this ideal since 2013, since its establishment, our goal and mission has been to bring the family together regardless of the circumstances its members are in.

Over time, ARNIS donated armchairs for Kangaroo Mother Care in NICU, organized the F.I.N.E. Course Level 1 for 350  medical teams members specialized in Neonatology, from 12 hospitals, and training in Level 2 for 8 doctors and nurses, donated countless materials and equipment so that parents can be with their long-hospitalized newborns, organized work-visits in hospitals abroad for various neonate medical teams, KMC contests, campaigns to raise awareness of parents’ needs and the benefits of their presence for newborns, developed informative and educational materials (seminars, guides, brochures) and organized moral and psychological support groups, workshops and courses for the community of parents.

ARNIS fights every day for Family Centered Care in Neonatology in Romania, to increase the quality of medical services and reduce the number of children with disabilities in Romania.

The total NICU Program budget between 2018-2022 was 1,366,021.54 lei

Newborn beneficiaries: 19,100 and parent beneficiaries: 38,200

*information available in the ARNIS Activity Reports 2018-2022

References

[1] World Health Organization, Children: improving survival and well-being, 8 Sep 2020, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/children-reducing-mortality

[2] World Health Organization, Kangaroo mother care: Implementation strategy for scale-up adaptable to different country contexts, 16 May 2023, https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/367625/9789240071636-eng.pdf

Foto si grafică © EFCNI ©ARNIS