29.11.2022

This is the result of the implementation of the Controlled Hypothermia project over 5 years. From 2017 to 2022, AYALA Charity Foundation, for 300 million tenge, raised from sponsors and through donations from Kazakhstanis, equipped the intensive care units of 14 children’s medical centres in Kazakhstan with modern equipment for automatic hypothermia and saved the lives of 238 newborns.

In the structure of infant mortality, newborn children make up more than 60 percent. The main causes are damage to the central nervous system, including due to severe hypoxia during childbirth. Hypoxic-ischemic brain damage at birth triggers a cascade of pathological processes in the child’s body, causing the death of brain cells. The result is at least severe disability; in the worst cases, life cannot be saved.

In 2016, at the invitation of AYALA Charity Foundation, Professor Arunasas Lyubshis (Lithuania), spoke for the first time about the successful practice of using automatic hypothermia units in maternity hospitals of the European Union at a free course for Kazakhstani neonatologists. At that time, no one in Kazakhstan knew about this equipment, and hypothermia to save newborns was used exclusively by improvised means, using medical bags with frozen water. Despite the heroic efforts of doctors, this led to a high level of disability in newborns with severe forms of hypoxia during childbirth. And then Aidan Suleimenova, founder and president of AYALA Charity Foundation took a decision to drastically change the situation.

“We started this project as a pilot at the Centre for Perinatology and Pediatric Cardiac Surgery in Almaty and at the National Research Centre for Motherhood and Childhood in Astana. During the year, automatic hypothermia was applied to 75 newborns. Intensive care doctors noted that in children treated with a hypothermia apparatus, metabolic disorders were corrected more quickly and blood oxygen saturation levels improved. Subsequently, these newborns received treatment and were discharged home functionally healthy,” said Aidan Suleimenova, president of AYALA Charity Foundation.

Based on the success of the pilot projects, the Foundation proved the importance of equipping the country’s perinatal Centres with hypothermia units to the RoK Ministry of Healthcare, and signed a Memorandum on coordination of the efforts as part of the Controlled Hypothermia project with it. This allowed to include hypothermia units in the list of medical equipment for mandatory government procurement.

“Today, from the standpoint of global evidence-based medicine, only therapeutic hypothermia provides a reliable method of neuroprotection in children born with severe hypoxia during childbirth. Despite a significant scientific progress in the pharmaceutical industry, there are still no medicines that can protect the brain of newborns from irreversible damage resulting from hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy. In addition, a hypothermia unit coupled with an amplitude electroencephalography monitor relieves the enormous load on nurses and doctors working in intensive care units who are required to monitor and maintain constant body temperature in a child for dozens of hours in a row. Neonatologists of Kazakhstan thank AYALA Charity Foundation and Aidan Suleimenov for their great assistance in maintaining functional health in newborns,” noted Bekturgan Karin, Chairman of the Congress of Neonatologists of Kazakhstan.

Therapeutic hypothermia shall be used in the first hours of a newborn’s life. The unit automatically and smoothly reduces the newborn’s body temperature to 34 degrees and maintains it at the desired level for 72 hours, and then gradually warms the child. Only this makes it possible to change the metabolism in the child’s body, provide its brain with glucose, and thereby protect the cells of the central nervous system from irreversible damage. The amplitude electroencephalography monitor that comes in the set with the hypothermia unit helps doctors monitor and efficiently adjust the therapy used.

Since 2017, medical institutions in 12 cities of Kazakhstan have received 14 automatic hypothermia units and 13 amplitude electroencephalography monitors worth 300,748,500 tenge from the fees of AYALA Charity Foundation. Including 2022, AYALA Charity Foundation donated hypothermia unit systems worth more than 134 million tenge to 7 medical institutions. They were received by the Oblast Perinatal Centres of Aktau, Taldykorgan, Uralsk, the Mother and Child Centre of Ust-Kamenogorsk, City Perinatal Centre of Shymkent, Perinatal Unit of Zhambyl Oblast Multidisciplinary Hospital, Republican Research Centre for Obstetrics, Gynecology and Perinatology in Almaty.

“For five years, owing to support of a number of major sponsors and donations from tens of thousands of Kazakhstanis through boxes, terminals and banks, we managed to equip a third of all perinatal centres in Kazakhstan with hardware systems for automatic hypothermia. They have already saved functional health of 238 children. In the coming years, our units will help save the lives of hundreds more children by experienced neonatologists. We are pleased to unite the efforts of Kazakhstanis in the fight for the quality of life of the little citizens of our country,” stressed Aidan Suleimenova.