Premature newborn baby Henry sleeps on his mother Evelyne’s chest in the Kangaroo Mother Care ward in the Bungoma Hospital in Kenya. Save the Children established this ward and trained the staff to promote the survival of prematurely born babies using skin-to-skin contact technique known as Kangaroo Mother Care.
Save the Children has been working with Bungoma County to spread the use of Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) since 2014. As a result, KMC is now being implemented in nine health facilities. Save the Children has provided basic equipment to care for the babies, trained health care workers and established follow-up care for babies who have been sent home.
95 health care workers have been trained on KMC as well as service providers in the local communities who will help mothers practice KMC at home. Working with local staff has been useful in increasing acceptance and improving family support and involvement at the community level.
Thanks to Kangaroo Mother Care, 18 mothers who practiced skin-to-skin care with their babies are now volunteering their support to other mothers who are just learning about KMC for the first time. These women have helped to increase the level of acceptance of skin-to-skin care both at the facilities and within the communities they’re housed by; they have become very popular and are now trusted community resource persons on Kangaroo Mother Care.