Africa-Press – Tanzania. THE Ministry of Health, Social Development, Gender, Elderly and Children is looking for alternative methods to save lives of premature newborn infants or those with underweight instead of using incubators.
Responding to a question before the National Assembly here, the Minister under the docket Ms Doroth Gwajima explained that studies had shown that there are more challenges of using incubators than benefits.
“Incubators have caused the spread of disease from one child who was previously admitted to another who will be admitted there. In addition, there is no closeness between the mother giving birth and the baby being placed in an incubator,” explained the minister.
According to her, the use of an incubator in an environment where electricity is not always reliable is also a challenge. In such an environment, she said, the incubator could be a source of infection and death rather than help to save lives.
However, Dr Gwajima said, the few available incubators were being used for babies born with very low birth weight and adherence to the rules of hygiene to avoid possible side effects.
To reduce infant mortality, the minister pointed out that her Ministry in collaboration with stakeholders was insisting each Hospital to establish specialized infant care units in line with the national neonatal Care Units (NCU) guidelines. Such rooms are a Kangaroo maternity ward for neonatal care and a newborn baby treatment room. As of July 2021, she said, a total of 159 hospitals have already set up such rooms and urged all new hospitals to establish and ensure they are operated in accordance with the national guidelines.
The question was asked by Norah Mzeru (Special Seats-CCM) who wanted to know the government’s plan to install enough incubator machines in the country to prevent infant mortality.
In her responses, the minister said that so far there are approximately 214 incubators nationwide at various hospital levels.
An incubator is used to help infants, those born prematurely or underweight, to keep them warm and to prevent them from losing.
