June 16, 2010
Well we are still having internet issues here in Namitete. Yiwen and I will go into Lilongwe on Saturday to post this, and other blogs. It is very challenging not having internet or easy phone communication. I feel disconnected and more homesick than I have ever felt in 21 years of life, however, these feelings aren’t too severe and definitely not enough to distract me when at St. Gabriels. We finally got to meet with Matron Kamera. All of us discussed our technologies with her in turn, stating their intended goals, how they work and then asking where she saw them being most useful.
The hot cot electronics controls might be useful, but as it is missing their special thermostats right now, it is not very functional. The hot cot crib built by Elizabeth Nesbit and Yiwen when they were here last year still works and its use has been recorded about 4 times in this past year. It is kept in the “kangaroo room” which is a special room, with two kangaroo nurses, that is kept very warm. The kangaroo method is a way of keeping premature or low birthweight babies warm. The mother holds the child continuously to her chest in a warm environment. It helps maintain body heat through skin to skin contact, encourages breast feeding, neonatal health and mother-child bonding. It is a fairly new “method” and is popular for low resource settings because it requires little technology or direct cost. The incubator seems to be used much less than the kangaroo method here at St. Gabriels.
Yiwen and I were able to clear up a little confusion surrounding the use of the current incubator with the kangaroo nurses. The number or lightbulbs turned on is directly related to the temperature of the cot. If you get a child, you must look up on a table, its weight and age to determine the necessary air temperature in the cot. Then you refer to a table which says how many light bulbs you use to get that air temperature. They weren’t following this method, but we were happy to learn, that the nurses attentively monitor the baby’s skin temperature when in the incubator for safety. In any case, the nurses always use all 4 bulbs, the warmest setting. This made sense considering the tiny weight of the children, some less than 800 g (less than 1 lb). The electronics for this cot that we brought would help remove both the problem of choosing the right number of bulbs (by only allowing all 4 to be turned on) and would only allow a high and a low temperature setting, chosen based on the discretion of the nurses. Then they could be sure that the air temperature was indeed the temperature selected by the electronics. I hope to show the box to some of the pediatric nurses soon to get feedback.