Help tiny Superheroes. 4

The road to full recovery for premature babies is long and thorny, as such babies require long-term monitoring, care and treatment in a medical facility. This category of babies is characterized by prolonged neonatal jaundice, the untimely diagnosis of which can lead to toxic damage to the central nervous system, and as a result, the child may develop deafness, blindness, movement disorders, delayed psychomotor development, and convulsions.

Therefore, the timely diagnosis of neonatal jaundice is extremely important, but venous blood collection for the operative decision of treatment tactics for pathological jaundice of newborns requires the puncture of fragile and overly sensitive skin and a tiny vein, which is a very painful procedure. During treatment, patients in a hurry are subjected to numerous painful invasive manipulations, most of which are performed during the first 3 days (on average, a child receives 7 painful procedures per day). 

The non-invasive transcutaneous method of measuring the level of bilirubin provides a significant reduction in the stress and pain burden on newborns, which inevitably accompanies them during the collection of venous blood to determine the level of total bilirubin by an invasive method. But to use this method, you need a suitable device – a bilirubinometer.                                     

The goal of our project is to reduce the number of painful procedures for women in a hurry on the way to their recovery by purchasing a transcutaneous bilirubinometer for Chernivtsi Maternity Hospital №2. Last year, 1,696 babies from all over Ukraine were born in this institution, because many pregnant women had to seek shelter in its Western part due to the war, of which 70 babies needed a long-term stay in the institution to wean.                       

Let's help the little ones to overcome this difficult and long journey and find themselves at home with their relatives as soon as possible!