“NO NEWBORN OR CHILD SHOULD DIE FOR LACK OF TERTIARY OR QUATERNARY INTENSIVE CARE SERVICES”

Dr Dinesh Kumar Chirla, Director, Intensive Care Services, Rainbow Children’s Hospital talks about the importance of intensive care facilities at a children’s hospital. Excerpts of a conversation with BW Businessworld:

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Why are intensive care services needed in a children’s hospital in the first place?

The incidence of neonatal mortality rate is 20.3 per thousand live births in our country and under five years of age mortality rate is 35.73 per thousand live births. Prematurity, birth asphyxia and sepsis are the commonest problems for which newborn babies need intensive care services, apart from congenital problems detected antenatally during the foetal scan or after birth.

Children with pneumonias, severe gastroenteritis, dengue fevers, cancer, heart disease, seizures, liver failure, trauma following surgery, post-transplant — all need intensive care services. The levels of intensive care services can be graded from 1 to 4, based on the support they need.

To save some very sick children we will need advanced intensive care services like ECMO, high frequency ventilation, neuromonitoring, CRRT (dialysis), nitric oxide therapy and other supportive therapies. For pre-term babies, we are now able to save those born as early as within 24 weeks of gestation and weighing 500 grams at birth. This is possible with expert medical and nursing care and advanced infrastructure.

To be able to save critically ill children and newborn babies, every children’s hospital will need intensive care services. At Rainbow, we have established the most advanced intensive care services for newborn babies and children and are able to save the sickest and smallest child

How important are intensive care services in determining the efficacy of a children’s hospital?