10.04.2023

More than 2.4 thousand children haved been saved in Kazakhstan using equipment that was donated to the Perinatal and Research Centres by AYALA Charity Foundation in 2022. For 16 years now, the Foundation has remained the only charitable organization in the country that specializes in saving newborn children.

Over the year, AYALA Foundation raised more than 563 million tenge for its main charitable projects — Let’s Breathe Life, Controlled Hypothermia, Retinopathy. 274.9 million tenge was allocated to assist Perinatal Centres. These funds allowed to purchase and install 83 units of modern medical equipment in 13 cities of Kazakhstan. According to the Foundation’s estimates, the donated equipment will save the lives and health of thousands of newborn children over the next 5 years.

— We work closely with the Ministry of Healthcare, helping the state in solving a very important and complex task: reduction of infant mortality and disability. In 2022, together with our permanentpartners and with the support of ophthalmologists, our Foundation managed to reverse the situation with the disability of premature newborns due to retinopathy. All centres employing qualified neonatal ophthalmologists have received modern equipment for timely diagnosis and treatment of this disease. As a result, more than 1,200 children were diagnosed using our equipment, of whon doctors were able to save a hundred children from complete blindness,” says Aidan Suleimenova, founder and president of AYALA Charity Foundation.

“We have done a great work in order for ophthalmologists could be able to obtain a clinical protocol approved at the Ministry level for the treatment of retinopathy of prematurity using Lucentis.” This is a great help to our doctors in their self-sacrificing work. Another important achievement concerns the reduction of disability in newborns due to severe asphyxia during childbirth. Last year, our Foundation was able to cover a third of the country’s perinatal centres with equipment for automatic hypothermia. More than 330 children remained alive and healthy because our units were installed in perinatal centres,” notes Aidan Suleimenova.

AYALA Charity Foundation pays a lot of attention to the professional development of neonatologists. Since 2021, the Foundation has been developing a platform with free online courses for doctors, AYALA Online Academy. This platform works to provide Kazakhstani doctors and nursing staff from perinatal Centres, maternity hospitals and oblast hospitals with free, convenient and easy access to courses from leading practitioners in neonatology, intensive care and pediatrics.

For two years, it has posted 7 courses in Kazakh and Russian, and this year it will host 4 more courses on caring for newborns.

— AYALA Foundation does not ignore offline training of doctors. Last year, with the support of Chevron, we organized a week-long skills improvement course for ultrasonographers from 20 regions of Kazakhstan on the early detection of intrauterine pathologies of fetal development. Expert ultrasonography diagnostics also helps reduce the level of disability in children from birth in our country. The growth trend of childhood disability in Kazakhstan is shocking — it has doubled over the past 5 years. Currently, 100 thousand children aged from birth date to 18 years have disability status. “With our programs for installation of special equipment in intensive care units, improvement of doctors’ skills, attracting partners from large international organizations, and interacting with the Ministry of Healthcare, we are trying to reverse this terrible trend for our country,” stresses Aidan Suleimenova.

– This year we will hold the first conference in Kazakhstan for neonatal nurses, as the quality of nursing of newborns in intensive care units and intensive care units also depends on them. We will record free video courses for them on AYALA Online Academy portal. We want to make a significant contribution to the development of the Fetal Health Centre in Almaty. Certainly, we will continue to install high-precision diagnostic equipment so that premature newborns do not go blind due to retinopathy.

A distinctive feature of AYALA Foundation’s activities is the consistency and sustainability of projects, as well as their transparency. The Foundation’s website contains all financial reports since 2007 and KPMG audit reports since 2016. The Foundation implements its medical projects in such a way as to ensure their sustainable operation for 5 years. This enables tracking their effectiveness and efficiency. Thanks to this approach of the Foundation in Kazakhstan, not outside the country, for 16 years, the lives of hundreds of thousands of children have been saved, and 67 medical institutions in the country have received over 1,200 units of resuscitation equipment.