31.05.2021

Units for therapeutic hypothermia and electroencephalography appeared at the Regional Clinical Hospital of Karaganda

They will help reduce newborn mortality caused by severe forms of asphyxia during childbirth.

The general partner of the AYALA Charity Foundation in the acquisition of modern resuscitation equipment was the Samruk-Kazyna Trust Social Projects Development Foundation.

“As part of this project, an electroencephalography monitor and an automatic controlled hypothermia unit, as well as a patient monitor, were purchased. All this will help reduce the infant mortality rate, as well as avoid the development of severe forms of disability in newborns as a result of asphyxia,” said Miras Irgebaev, official representative of the Samruk-Kazyna Trust Social Projects Development Foundation.

Every year, 19 thousand children are born in the Karaganda region, of whom about 7% are born prematurely. 6 perinatal Centres provide main assistance to them. One of them operates at the Regional Clinical Hospital and delivers about 5,000 births annually.

Last year, about 100 babies were born with moderate to severe asphyxia there. All of them needed therapeutic hypothermia, but there was no special equipment for this in the hospital, so it was carried out using improvised means.

Therapeutic hypothermia shall be used in the first hours of a newborn’s life, and even in the first minutes of a newborn’s life. Then there is a chance to restore functioning of brain cells. If such a unit is not available in the hospital, the child will most likely be left with severe functional damage to the central nervous system, and in the worst case, may die

“For the last 5 years, we have been actively working on equipping perinatal Centres with equipment for automatic controlled hypothermia. With the support of major sponsors, we installed such hardware systems at the National Research Centre for Maternity and Childhood in Nur-Sultan, at the Centre for Perinatology and Pediatric Cardiac Surgery in Almaty, and at the Regional Perinatal Centres of Atyrau, Turkestan, and Semey. Today we are very pleased to transfer this equipment to Karaganda and thank the general partner of the “Controlled Hypothermia” project — the Samruk-Kazyna Trust Foundation for the Development of Social Projects for their help in saving the lives and intelligence of little Karaganda residents,” noted Aidan Suleimenova, president of the AYALA Charity Foundation.