Paediatrician urges support for 31-year-old newborn intensive care unit

Babies born in Barbados or given intensive newborn care here have the best shot of surviving the first five years of life than elsewhere in the region, a senior paediatrician said Tuesday, declaring a near-perfect survival rate for premature babies and a steady decline in neonatal deaths.

Ahead of World Prematurity Day,  the paediatrician,  Dr Gillian Birchwood, has sought to raise the profile of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). She appealed for donors to support the work of an “expensive” life-saving team that takes in sick and premature babies from here and elsewhere in the region.

The NICU consultant specialist reported that in 2020, the neonatal mortality rate stood at six per 1,000 live births, which is said to be the best in the Caribbean at this time.

NICU cares for between 400 to 600 babies as young as 25 weeks and weighing as little as 500 to 600 grammes.

Dr Birchwood said: “More than 95 per cent of our premature babies survive which is a major achievement. That would be data from 2018 to 2020. Wednesday, November 17 is World Prematurity Day so we are focusing on the premature infant and they are the ones who will disproportionately require the services of a newborn intensive care unit and cannot survive without those services. Some of our babies can be in our unit for as long as six months, depending on how premature they are at the time.”

Prior to the unit’s opening in 1990, Barbados had a high neonatal mortality rate, she said, but the island is now one of only two Eastern Caribbean countries and among only four in the wider region with a NICU.

The consultant paediatrician said the Level 3 NICU at QEH is equipped with advanced technology, including ventilation, provides nutrition and specialized services including paediatric cardiology, paediatric surgery and ophthalmology.

She said: “We are able to provide a very high level of support for premature babies and we have cared for babies as small as just slightly over a pound who have survived and gone home. Our very smallest baby was just over 500 grammes, just over a pound and that baby was successfully able to be discharged.

“That little one is now two-years-old and she is the smallest baby who we have ever cared for that survived and that is a remarkable achievement in the Caribbean. We have excellent support services provided at the QEH and also the entire team because it’s an entire team of specialized nurses and doctors and support staff who would be very pivotal in the care of such infants.”

Dr Birchwood stressed that the NICU benefits significantly from specialized nurses who have been working with newborns for over a decade and a homegrown neonatal nursing training programme. It is also seeking a partnership with a Canadian group that has successfully conducted neonatal nursing training in the Caribbean to train QEH staff, she added.

“We are also a tertiary referral centre for neonatal care that means that you don’t just provide care for newborns in your country because every baby who is sick or premature born in Barbados, has to come to the NICU at the QEH regardless of where they were born, but we also receive transfers from other Caribbean islands,” she said.

“We try very hard to have high-risk pregnancies transferred here early so the babies will be born here in a facility where we will care for them, but at times that’s not possible and then we will have transfers of newborn infants where they could not identify beforehand that they were high risk. It is much riskier to transfer after birth.”

The specialist, who indicated that many are not aware that the NICU exists, believes the public should be educated about its relevance and importance to national and regional development. In order to carry out its mandate, the NICU, which is an expensive undertaking, is in continuous need of donations, she added.
anesthenry@barbadostoday.bb