The "NICU" Experience

Last week I got the chance to take a small tour of some of the hospital - Moi Teaching & Referral Hospital (MTRH). MTRH is one of two large referral hospitals in the entire nation, the other one is in Nairobi. MTRH has much more capability than other hospitals or health care centres around other parts of the country. Thus, they get patients who are sicker & at higher risk for various things. I asked to see their sick nursery or NICU. The pictures are below. The room is simply a small room with shelves (not isoletes) and to keep the preemies warm the temperature in the room is extremely hot provided by wall heaters. I was told that they have seen a handful of babies survive who are born around 26 weeks or 900 grams. This is incredible to me! When we you see the conditions & understand some of their treatment capabilities it is even more incredible to me. They don't have any ventilators. In fact, I'm not sure how much they use oxygen for any respiratory treatment - I didn't see any babies on oxygen while I was there. They don't do any central lines - if needed, they may start a small IV heplock. Every baby gets an NG feeding tube & they just pour the food down in order to get them to grow since no one is ever on parentral nutrition. And yet, somehow certain babies seem to survive. Babies are amazing to me. I thought some of you would enjoy seeing the pictures of their NICU. They are actually getting ready to move into this large, beautiful new building - the new Mother/Baby hospital.

Here are the babies, lying in their shelves, wrapped in blankets - their charts are underneath.

A few more shelved babies on the next wall.

Two naked babies with heplocks. I think they were recent newborns & were being more closely observed which is why they are not bundled.

A closer look at the bundled babies lying in their shelves.

Below the shelves are the wall heaters to keep the room hot!

Right outside of the main room there is another smaller room they use for isolation. They put babies who have come from home here as well as any septic babies. The box in the left corner is their phototherapy box with lights.