RICH countries could learn a lesson about caring for low-birthweight babies from poorer countries, say doctors in Colombia. Letting parents keep these babies warm is at least as good as using incubators, and encourages breastfeeding and bonding, they argue.
Worldwide, 20 million babies weighing under 2 kilograms are born each year. Many are premature and unable to regulate their body heat properly, and so are usually put in incubators. But in 1978, overcrowded wards forced a Colombian doctor, Edgar Rey, to invent “kangaroo care”. The baby, wearing a nappy and bonnet, is kept next to the mother or father’s bare chest in an upright position 24 hours a day.
The method is not suitable for babies who need other support such as ventilation, but they can be switched to it later. Kangaroo care is now being adopted in 25 developing countries worldwide. It is also used in some rich countries, but only as a complement to incubators – parents usually hold their babies kangaroo-style for just a couple of hours at a time.
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But in the British Medical Journal (vol 329, p 1179), doctors in Colombia call for the full technique to be adopted more widely. “It has distinct advantages,” says Juan Gabriel Ruiz-Pelaez, a paediatrician at Javeriana University in Bogotá. “The infant starts to respond better to the mother and the mother is better able to read the infant’s signals.”
