Our vision is to provide leading Tertiary Care for newborns for this communities and neighbouring countries of Africa. We aspire to be the place where families desire to celebrate the introduction of new beginnings, the well-being of their loved ones across generations - from children to adults to elders, and for some the challenging transitions of loved ones with dignity, comfort and smiles. We desire to be the favoured work-place and partner of choice for leading doctors, surgeons, nurses, specialists and staff. We want to be the safest and most trusted home and healthy-haven for anyone in our city and community.

• Mechanical ventilation: Sick/preterm infants may have lung immaturity/dysfunction. These neonates may require ventilator support. The NICU takes pride in declaring that it was the first unit in private set up to start ventilation.
• Universal Hearing screening: All babies in nursery are subjected to OAE (otoacoustic emission test) done to pick up babies with hearing loss. It is a simple test done in nursery at bedside. Some babies may require advanced tests like Brain stem evoked response audiometry, which is available in our unit.
• Neuroimaging: Premature babies are prone to have intraventricular haemorrhage (brain haemorrhage) especially in first week of life. Very preterm infants are periodically evaluated with bed side ultrasound by sonologists, who are available round the clock. Facilities of advanced imaging like MRI, Diffusion weighted MRI, MR Angiography are also available at our centre.
• Surfactant delivery: Premature lungs are deficient in a substance known as surfactant, leading to a stiff lung and breathing difficulty. In this situation, commercially available natural surfactant is instilled into baby’s lung through a special tube. Giving surfactant to these babies improves their lung function, helps them to come out of ventilator faster and ultimately help in improving survival and reducing lung injury.
• Parental nutrition: Because of poor swallowing capability and immature gastrointestinal functions, the small preterm and sick baby are not able to tolerate oral feeds well and requires intravenous nutrition in form of glucose, fats and proteins. This parenteral nutrition is prepared with aseptic precautions under laminar flow and is delivered via intravenous route, till the time baby is able to tolerate oral feeds. Not many units in Africa use laminar flow for aseptic preparation of parenteral nutrition and drugs.

• Genetic counselling services: All babies born or admitted to institute are universally screened for certain metabolic/ genetic diseases like hypothyroidism, G6PD deficiency and congenital adrenal hyperplasia. For this a few drops of blood are collected on a filter paper. Sick neonates with congenital anomalies or suspected inborn errors of metabolism are evaluated extensively with help of geneticists.
• Lactation Support: We are proud to be able to have a dedicated lactation counsellor who takes sessions on breast-feeding and helps mother with expression of breast milk. Apart from lactation counselling she is also a qualified stress counsellor and spends valuable time helping relieving & counselling parents of sick neonates in NICU.
• Fetal medicine: Antenatal monitoring of fetus for diagnosis and management is an essential area of Perinatology. We have Department of Fetal medicine where various antenatal procedures like amniocentesis, chorionic villous biopsy and intrauterine transfusion etc are done.
• Inhaled nitric oxide: Babies who have severe respiratory failure with high pulmonary artery pressure may require inhaled nitric oxide (a gas delivered into the lungs) to maintain adequate oxygen levels in blood. We are amongst the few units in Africa which has the experience of using nitric oxide and facilities for monitoring of such critically sick babies.
• Eye Examination: Retinopathy of prematurity of prematurity (ROP) is a disease of very preterm babies, which can lead to blindness if not treated in time. To prevent ROP, a team of neonatal ophthalmologists, periodically examine retina of these preterm infants as per international guideline Babies with advanced stage of ROP are offered bedside laser therapy to halt progression of disease.

• High Frequency Ventilators: Babies who have severe lung disease may fail on conventional ventilators. Our Unit has one of the best high frequency ventilators named Sensor Medics for supporting such babies
• Developmental supportive Care: A team of Developmental Paediatrician and an Occupational therapist and support staff visits the nursery regularly and remains involved in the developmental support of the sick preterm babies. We try to give physical, visual and auditory stimuli once sick babies are stable for their faster recovery and rehabilitation. Mothers are also involved in the care of the baby; they are encouraged to hold the baby next to their skin (Kangaroo Mother Care), which helps in better growth and development of infants apart from helping in establishing lactation.
• Phototherapy and Exchange Transfusion: Babies who develop significant jaundice require special lights called phototherapy. We have more than 10 such units including bili-blankets. Some Babies require exchange transfusion for severe jaundice. We do around 20-30 exchange transfusion per year. Most of these babies are extramural babies.
• Bedside Echocardiography: Bed side echocardiography is very important tool in the diagnosis and management of heart problems in premature as well as term babies. We are very fortunate to have such services available round the clock which are essential for diagnosis and management of all heart problems related to neonates. All neonatal echo are done bedside by Pediatric cardiologists.

Allied Pediatric Sciences

• Pediatric surgery facilities: We have excellent facilities for neonatal surgeries with 2 senior Pediatric Surgeons attached to the unit who are vastly experienced in surgical repair of anomalies such as congenital diaphragmatic hernia, trachea-oesophageal fistula, intestinal atresias, imperforated anus, omphalocele to name few.

• Pediatric Cardiac Sciences: A team of Pediatric cardiology and cardiac surgeons help us manage babies with complicated heart disease that occur by birth. Our Cardiac Surgeon hold immense experience in operating cases such as Transposition of Great Arteries/Tetralogy of Fallot/Complex Congenital Heart disease. Functional Echo and bedside PDA ligations are routinely done in our NICU by the cardiac team.

• Others: Padiyath Medicity - Hopital Du Cinquantenaire is one of the largest super-specialty hospitals of the country. As such we are fortunate to have Pediatric neurosurgery, Pediatric Nephrology, Pediatric Neurology, Pediatric Endocrinology, Pediatric Gastroenterology-all under one roof . We do seek the help of these specialties if required.

Transporting sick newborn babies in our country is a challenge. Our unit has two transport incubators with inbuilt breathing machines with the help of which even very sick babies can be transported. We offer transport services round the clock. We have 24x7helpline no-..... to deal with all transport related queries.

Quality care initiatives

It is very important to have inbuilt quality care initiatives in the management of patients and we are doing number of initiatives like Hospital care associated infections audit, hand washing procedure audit, Insertion and maintenance bundles for the central lines, Surveillance information sheet, ventilator associated infection audit and human milk audit for preterm babies. The plan for the future years is to compare the various audits of our department with other departments in the country and outside.

Highly specialized care for newborns is provided in our Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Our NICU is a Level IIID care facility and treats all neonatal medical and surgical problems, including advanced therapy for cardiac and pulmonary diseases, such as cardiac surgery and ECMO. Specially trained neonatal nurses are available for one-on-one patient care when needed. Subspecialists from all the paediatric disciplines are available for consultation 24 hours a day.

Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Padiyath Medicity - Hopital Du Cinquantenaire is probably the best in this region with regards to design, quality of construction, and the underlying child safety measures:

• Restricted access
• Uninterrupted power supply

• Medical infrastructure
• Designated sterile zones

• Medical gas distribution system

The NICU has three designated areas of care:

Level III NICU (Critical Care):

Newborns admitted into the Level III are critically ill and require artificial life support technology. Typically, a very sick baby with life threatening illness/condition would be cared for here. The medical and nursing supervision and care is at the highest intensity here. Very premature babies, babies with serious infections, lung and heart conditions, and those with major birth defects involving the brain, heart, lungs and kidneys would be admitted here.

Neonatal High Dependency Unit

Once babies are of life support and recovering from illness, or problems related to prematurity, they are transferred to the High Dependency Unit where they are nursed and monitored continually. Such babies are typically off oxygen or breathing support and still on artificial tube feeding and on intravenous fluids and antibiotics. Many prematurely born and very low birth weight babies (less than 1500 grams at birth) are cared for in this unit in special incubators which have a carefully controlled internal temperature and humidity, noise and lighting. They may need to stay for several weeks till they are mature enough to feed from their mothers and maintain their body temperature.

Despite the high-tech operations at work in our NICU, the care we provide is purely family-centered, meaning all of our efforts revolve around your family. We encourage parents to spend as much time as possible with their babies, and provide accommodations, such as visiting lounges, breast feeding suites and rooms for overnight stays and family visiting.

Support Services

To help ease any anxiety parents feel while their babies stay in our NICU, we offer the following free support services:

• Emotional/spiritual support - Our non-denominational chaplains, mental health counselors and family support liaisons can be a significant source of comfort.

• Social Workers -- Our social workers and case managers help answer questions and address family housing, support and financial concerns.

• Volunteer Cuddlers -- Our "cuddlers" are a wonderful group of volunteers who are specially trained to hold and soothe newborns when parents cannot be with their babies.

The High Risk Paediatrics unit at Padiyath Medicity - Hopital Du Cinquantenaire provides developmental follow-up of children from birth to age 8 who are designated as high risk due to prematurity and/or low birth weight or prenatal exposure to drugs. The goal of the clinic is to provide early identification and referral for early intervention for the neuro developmental and neurobehavioral problems associated with prematurity, drug exposure and other biomedical and environmental risk factors.

Pediatric Services

The Pediatric Services at include outpatient and inpatient services for children and newborns. Children with ailments and problems of a non-critical nature can avail of these services and typically are evaluated and managed by scheduled appointments with our paediatricians or as walk in patients during the regular hours of the day.

Services offered include:

• Diagnosis and Treatment of minor ailments in children
• Advice on Vaccination

• Cross referral of patients to appropriate super specialists as needed
• Professional Approach and Advice on Growth and Development Disorders

• Screening Programme for Detection of Childhood Disease

Promptness of service and the tender loving care meted to children by our nursing staff during the long outpatient waiting period for children are our hallmarks.

The neonatal and obstetrics team have regular weekly meetings to review the high-risk cases and arrive at a management consensus. Paediatrician and obstetricians provide joint antenatal counselling for expectant parents complicated by preterm deliveries or babies with congenital malformation. For cases that required ICU support, the parents were further counselled by our nurse specialist during NICU visitations to make them better prepared for the stressful neonatal course. This programme provides a high standard and quality of care.

We are dedicated to providing state-of-the-art care to babies and are committed to the education and training of physicians and scientists through a diligent research program that respects and incorporates both basic sciences and clinical investigation.

The department is manned by qualified and experienced neonatologists, round the clock Paediatrician on call service. We work together with expert obstetricians to handle high risk pregnancies.