JENS - CONGRESS IN ROME SEPTEMBER 2023

Souffle2vie is present at the V. Congress of the joint European Neonatal Societies between September 19th to 22nd, 2023 in Rome with a poster presentation.

In short: During two days, midwifes and doctors working in public and private maternity wards in a very underpriviledged area in the suburbs of Conakry, were trained in neontal resuscitation. At the end of the training, they were equipped with basic devices for neonatal resuscitation like bag and masks, a handheld aspiration tool, a stethoscope etc.

To measure the impact of such a basic training, a research project was associated. Over six months before and after the training, the obstetrical and neonatal actviity in the participating centers was registered and analyzed.

Results: Early neonatal mortality (within the 6 first postnatal hours) dropped from 27.5 to 4.3 deaths per 1000 live births, and neonatal transfers from 11.2% to 1.7%.

With a two-days training course, early neonatal mortality could be reduced by 84% and neonatal transfers by a factor of 6x.

Together with the technical university of Lausanne (EPFL), the High school for design (ECAL) and the two university hospitals of Lausanne (CHUV) and Geneva (HUG), souffle2vie is participating at a project to design and build a newborn incubator to ban devastating neonatal hypoithermia. This incubator has to fulfill the following conditions:

• - low cost in construction and maintenance
• - easy to manipulate and to clean
• - maintain temperature over a period of at least 6h ours      without electricity

This paper published in PLOS One in august 2021 shows the dramatic situation of neonatal care in Guinea. It describes quality of care, morbidity and mortality in the only neonatal intensivce care unit of the country, the Institute of Nutrition and Infant Health (INSE) at the University Hospital of Donka, Conakry. 

In February 2019, the pediatrician Dr Bea Merscher was working for souffle2vie at the INSE (NICU of the University Hospital of Conakry) . Thanks to her creativity, engagement and medical knowledge she treated and saved two newborn infants with a pneumothorax, a first time for Guinea. 

We published the improvised drainage equipment and methods in BMJ Case reports. Here, these methods serve for hundred of other physicians working in similar conditions as a model.

At the largest maternity of the Republic of Guinea, at the university hospital Ignace Deen of Conakry with its more tahn 6'000 deliveries per year, the follwing dramatic results were obtained by an observational study over 2 years:

• One of 70 deliveries has a fatal outcome for the mother
• Main causes of maternal death were hemorrhage (56%), retroplacental haematoma (10%), eclampsie (9%)