Baby boom needs more neonatal units

Medical experts maintain that the number of premature birth cases in the UAE are rising due to a variety of reasons, including stress, lack of family care, high level of infertility, and in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

For this, they assert that there is need for more specialised medical facilities to care for premature babies.

“Fifty years ago, the chances of a 23-week-old baby’s survival was only 5 per cent. Now, it is 95 per cent survival chance, if the baby is admitted in a level three neonatal intensive care unit [NICU],” said Dr Anil Pillai, Deputy Medical Director and Consultant Neonatologist at the Neonatal Center, Al Ain Specialty Hospital.

“While there are some neonatal facilities in the private sector, there is demand for more as the number of premature births is increasing,” he says.

Shifa was one of the several young babies that attended the second anniversary of the hospital’s Neonatal Centre in Al Ain on Saturday.

“The baby had breathing difficulty and we gave her artificial respiration and medicine to develop her lungs. Within three days, she was moved to the noninvasive ICU with minimum damage to brain and lung. She needed artificial seeds as the digestive system wasn’t fully developed. Special central lines were connected to the baby and artificially prepared protein solutions, fat solutions were fed to the baby.”

After 130 days, she was removed from the NICU. Now the two years old baby is healthy and is developing normally.

In another case, an Emirati mother delivered a 39-week-old baby with fungal infection in blood.

“We could identify the infection and antibiotics did not work. It was a case of pre-time delivery with problems like stiff lung, which we treated by putting the baby on special ventilator with nitric oxide to reduce lung stiffness. The baby was very sick but he improved under our care and now he is a healthy seven-month-old baby.”

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