Continuous skin-to-skin contact immediately after delivery, even before the baby is stabilized, can reduce premature mortality by 25% according to a study published in Nature.
The “kangaroo mother” method consists of carrying a premature child on the stomach in skin-to-skin contact. This method is known to contribute to the good health and well-being of full-term or premature infants. Concerning the latter, on the other hand, the WHO recommended until now that skin-to-skin contact should only be offered once the little ones have been stabilized, which can take several days for those weighing less than 2 kg at birth. But is this really the best approach?
“ The idea of offering skin-to-skin contact immediately after delivery to very small, unstable babies has met with fairly strong resistance, but around 75% of deaths occur before the infants have been deemed sufficiently stable“, underlines Nils Bergman, from the Karolinska Institut, in Sweden.
A study carried out in five hospitals
In a new study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and led by the WHO, Bergman and his team examined whether or not immediate kangaroo mother care could lead to better survival rates for infants of ‘A birth weight 1 to 1.8 kg.
This work focused on babies born in middle-income countries. The data was collected from five teaching hospitals in Ghana, India, Malawi, Nigeria and Tanzania where infant mortality ranged from 20 to 30% before the study.
Before beginning this work, training in basic neonatal care and the “kangaroo method” was provided to nursing staff at each hospital by doctors from the University of Stavanger, Norway. They were also offered basic equipment to measure infants’ oxygen levels and provide assisted ventilation.
A reduction in mortality of 25% among premature babies
For this study, 3211 premature babies were randomly divided into two groups. Members of one group benefited from skin-to-skin contact with their mothers immediately after birth, while the others waited until they were stabilized. In the meantime, these infants were cared for in separate units and were only reunited with their mothers for feeding.
During the first 72 hours after birth, infants in the first group received approximately 17 hours of skin-to-skin contact per day, compared to 1.5 hours in the control group.
Result, mortality during the first 28 days was 12% in the “kangaroo” group compared to 15.7% in the control group, which corresponds to a discount of around 25%. Infants in the first group also had better body temperature and suffered less bacterial blood poisoning.
“ The main message of this study is that low birth weight newborns should receive skin-to-skin contact immediately after birth and then in a mother-infant pair care unit where mothers and babies would be cared for together“, concludes Björn Westrup, co-author of this work. “ Our results suggest that this model of care, which in itself does not require resources, could have significant health effects.“.
Researchers believe this approach could save the lives of 150,000 additional newborns worldwide each year. In the meantime, the WHO is reviewing its current recommendations on kangaroo mother care.
