The Special Newborn Care Unit at Tiruchi Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Government Hospital and Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to provide home-based newborn care for babies born at the hospital. Collector S.Sivarasu inspected the facility on Friday.
The initiative, christened ‘Chellapillai,’ aims to give guidance to new mothers on how to care for their infant at home after the discharge from the hospital. Training will be given on nutritional counselling, stages of child development, breastfeeding and how to hold an infant while doing so, etc.
Anganwadi workers, who usually go door-to-door to provide this training, will have access to a large number of mothers at one location, and can therefore effectively provide training. They also provide ‘sathu maavu’ (nutritious flour of multigrains) for mothers for a period of six months and provide guidance on the types of iron-rich food to prevent anaemia.
A WhatsApp group, by the name ‘Chellapillai,’ has been created to regularly monitor mothers and babies. Regular updates are requested when the baby turns one month old, then three, seven, 14, 21, 28, 42 and 60 months. The child’s weight is checked and other developmental indicators such as cooing, crawling is monitored through the group.
The Collector said that due to the prompt action by the initiative, the number of patients admitted to the SNCU has drastically reduced.