Neonatology and Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC)

The Neonatal Unit consists of:

a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) (6 beds)
a High Care Unit for 16 premature babies
an Observation Unit (10 beds) for full-term babies

The Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) facility and Ward 4 Neonatal Unit consist of:

a neonatal step-down/outborn facility (10 beds)
a Kangaroo mother care unit (20 beds) where mothers and their babies reside.
International KMC Day 15 May - Pretoria News article

The Post Natal Wards

accommodate up to 40 healthy newborn infants.
An additional neonatal service is also provided in these wards to identify problem cases earlier and to improve quality of care. In the process students and interns are also trained.

All neonates admitted to Kalafong Hospital are exclusively breast fed by their lodging mothers. A human milk bank also provides donor breast milk for those babies who, for various reasons, cannot receive breast milk from their own mothers. HIV infected mothers can also use the Pretoria Pasteurisation method, developed at Kalafong Hospital, to safely utilise their breast milk. This practice resulted in a dramatic drop in nosocomial sepsis and necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) amongst neonates.

The incidence of nosocomial infections and neonatal deaths in the neonatal unit have remained low despite substantially increasing admission rates over the last couple of years. The neonatal mortality and morbidity rates at Kalafong hospital have always been comparable and somewhat better than those of many other institutions. This can be partially ascribed to the judicious use of breast milk in this facility.

Abandoned babies and those for adoption receive support from Tshwane Haven and New Beginningz.

Follow-up Clinics

Neonatal unit follow-up clinic

All infants that were admitted to the neonatal unit are followed up once weekly.

High risk and Hearing follow up clinic

All infants that were admitted to the ICU are evaluated.

KMC clinic

The KMC patients are followed up at a weekly clinic until the infant reaches a weight of 3kg or reaches 6 weeks gestational age. Infants that need further follow-up evaluations are then referred to the appropriate specialist clinics.

Ward 4 follow-up clinic

Fortnightly evaluations on infants discharged from this ward.

ROP clinic

All infants <32 weeks or <1301 grams at birth are followed up by the ophthalmologists to exclude retinopathy of prematurity.

Projects

KMC:

Johnson & Johnson developed a poster on KMC for Fara Ngwana, the Gaurteng Health KMC implementation project.
The MRC Research Unit for Maternal and Infant Health Care Strategies also made a poster on KMC.

Thari Sling Project:

This was the brainchild of Dr Elize van Rooyen. The Thari (meaning second skin) acts like a kangaroo pouch and was developed to keep a premature or small baby snug and warm, tied to the mother's chest. Research has shown that the survival rate of premature babies increases if there is direct mother-to-child contact.