How Kangaroo Style Care Can Benefit Newborns

Scientists have recently explained how kangaroo style care can benefit newborns. The new study that researchers have conducted has proven that kangaroo-like mother care can reduce mortality among infants.

The Kangaroo mother care presupposes that mothers have skin-to-skin contact with their infants. This method has proven highly efficient in reducing mortality rates among young children. All mothers have to do is hold their babies on their skin for a couple of hours per day, if their condition is stable.

The name of the medical care derives from kangaroos’ practice of holding their babies in their marsupials. The method was first adopted in regions where incubators were unavailable, but recent research suggests the method should be used in other regions, as well.

Medical experts have reached this conclusion after reviewing the data from 124 studies. At the end of the research, it has been established that newborn babies with low birth rates of 4.4 lbs. had 36 percent bigger chances of survival due to the kangaroo care they received from their mothers.

The method was also effective in the fight against sepsis, a disease that can threaten children’s life, especially if they are prematurely born. The disease sees an excessive response of the body towards a potential infection and many babies don’t survive through it.

Doctors have concluded, based on this new experiment that the kangaroo-style care can have great benefits on new born babies. These can only be achieved with skin-to-skin contact between the mother and the fetus of up to 21 hours per day.

During the experiment, 66% of the mothers were asked to give kangaroo care to their children for less than four hours per day. At the opposite pole, 25% women were asked to remain in close contact with their newborns for 22 hours per day.

While the benefits of the kangaroo style care have been more or less assessed, scientists still have many questions to answer. First of all, researchers have to explain why this new care is so effective.

So far, they have only come up with a series of hypothesis. It is possible that being in direct contact with the mother’s skin protects the baby against possible infections as the baby’s skin is still underdeveloped. The mother can also keep a close eye on the baby and notice any signs of infection in time. Also, the body temperature of the babies is constantly balanced by their mother’s skin, scientists have suggested.

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