This week, Nils and Jill Bergman will be traveling to Rwanda as Nils is involved in the Bill and Melinda Gates Kangaroo Mother Care Acceleration Initiative and the Kangaroo Mother Care Product Forum, as well as the International Network of Kangaroo meeting.
At the Kangaroo Mother Care Product Forum, Nils will explain the use of the KangaCarrier specifically in stabilising the airway of a premature for SAFE skin to skin contact technique.
They will then head to Kigali to attend the International Network of Kangaroo (INK) meeting, a gathering of world’s experts on Kangaroo Mother Care, which has taken place every two years since 1996. The theme this year is “Kangaroo Mother Care an effective way to improve the survival and the quality of survival of preterm and low birth weight infants: evidences and successes”.
Nils will deliver four talks. The first is that skin-to-skin contact has to start at birth and is about the FIRST 1 000 seconds which is needed to lower the global neonatal mortality rate (most babies die in the first hour). He will then discuss his paper on the importance of one hourly sleep cycling and another talk is on the one hourly feeding as being essential for prematures. His fourth paper is about the kangaroula (Jill’s area of expertise) which in the third world will help improve neonatal survival.
As Nils has been on the steering committee since 1996, he will be networking with fellow experts and planning future meetings and the direction for Kangaroo Mother Care worldwide.
After the meetings, Nils and Jill will be heading to the mountains to see the gorillas which will be really exciting!