According to an WHO-led study, encourage skin against skin (also called ""mother-kangaroo method"") between a parent and their child immediately after childbirth would decrease the mortality of premature.And this, even if the latter have not yet reached a weight deemed stable.
PublicitéRecommended by the World Health Organization, the ""Kangaroo Mother"" method is to wear a premature child on the belly in skin contact against skin continuously.This technique would allow these particularly fragile infants (and those born in term) to be healthy.Until now, the WHO has advised to apply this method once the weight of the child stabilized, so as not to make him run any risk.Result: many prematurers are forced to spend several days in the incubator before being able to benefit from this very beneficial contact.
An error for Nils Bergman, doctor specializing in perinatal neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute (Sweden), which recalls that 75% of deaths in premature children occur before infants have reached this famous stable weight.In a study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and led by WHO, the researcher believes that the application of the ""Mother Kangaroo"" method immediately after childbirth would even reduce the mortality of the premature.25%.
3,000 premature babies observed
To find this figure, the neonatal medicine doctor has carried out his work in five university hospitals located in low -income countries and intermediate income: Ghana, India, Malawi, Nigeria and Tanzania.In these health facilities, the death rate of premature children were between 20% and 30% before the study.
After having trained the nursing staff in neonatal care and the Kangaroo method, Nils Bergman and his team observed the health of 3,211 premature babies distributed randomly in two groups: a first group encouraging the practice of the kangaroo method immediately after birth, andA second group preferring to wait until the child's weight is stable (in them, the skin against skin only took place at the time of feeding).
Among babies benefiting from the ""Mother Kangaroo"" method just after being born (the latter spent an average of 17 hours against their mother over the 72 hours according to their birth), the mortality rate reached 12% in the first 28 days, against 15.7% in the control group - a reduction of 25% of the number of deaths.The study also reveals that infants of the first group were also fewer to present a low body temperature or bacterial intoxication by blood.
150,000 lives saved in addition each year
""The main teaching of this study is that the newborns at low weight should receive a skin contact against skin immediately after their birth, then in a unit where they would be taken care of with their mother,"" concludes Björn Westrup, co-Author of the study and researcher in the Department of Health of Women and Children of the Karolinska Institute.""Our results suggest that this model of care, which does not require resources, could have significant health effects.""
Si elle devient la norme un jour, les chercheurs estiment que la méthode ""kangourou"" pourrait sauver jusqu'à 150 000 vies supplémentaires chaque année à travers le monde.
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