Nakaseke care unit gives babies chance to survive

The intense labour pains a mother endures during childbirth often transform into overwhelming joy the moment she holds her healthy newborn in her arms.

However, for some mothers, this joy is cut short when healthcare providers recommend that the baby be placed in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). This decision is usually made for newborns facing significant health complications.

At Nakaseke Hospital in Nakaseke District, the NICU provides critical care for premature infants and newborns who face health complications shortly after birth.

This unit, staffed by specially trained nurses, has saved the lives of more than 3,000 newborns between 2018 and 2024. It serves not only babies referred from the hospital’s maternity wing but also those sent from lower-level health facilities within and beyond the district.
The NICU was established seven years ago with the support of Friends of Nakaseke Hospital through the Adara Group.

Under the leadership of Sister Teddy Asaba, the NICU recently moved from its original, smaller room to a more spacious, independent building, made possible by a Shs260 million contribution from the Adara Group for construction and equipment.

The NICU is now equipped with seven baby warmers, eight incubators, and six phototherapy machines.

When Monitor visited the NICU on a guided tour by the hospital management on Tuesday afternoon, Ms Anita Nabulya, a registered nurse, was busy attending to five-day-old twins referred to the unit on November 8.

While the unit has four other babies under intensive care, Ms Nabulya said the mother of the twins was restless although the babies’ condition has improved. She added that the unit becomes a hive of activity whenever more than six babies are admitted at once.

“When we get several babies referred to the NICU at once, you realise the shortage of staff at our unit. You get to know what saving life means when the caretakers including the mother have to be comforted with a message of hope as their respective babies struggle for
life,” she said.

Nurses in the NICU are often required to multitask, balancing the continuous monitoring of infants in critical condition with supporting mothers who may be distressed by their baby’s health challenges.

The caregivers move between incubators, warmers, phototherapy machines, and the mothers of each child, ensuring that each infant receives the necessary care.

As I interview Ms Nabulya about her daily experiences and routines in the NICU, witnessing the fragile infants in the incubators and warmers provides a firsthand understanding of just how essential intensive care is for their survival.

The NICU receives cases involving a range of life-threatening health complications, including prematurity, birth asphyxia, congenital birth defects, neonatal sepsis, low birth weight, and neonatal jaundice, among others.

Cases that specifically require the use of a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machine are quickly referred to facilities equipped with CPAP for further management, according to NICU staff Between January and October 2024, the Nakaseke Hospital NICU handled
319 admissions, with August registering the highest the highest number, as 44 babies were referred for case management at the NICU.

As a public facility, the NICU relies heavily on supplies from government medical stores. However, the facility occasionally faces shortages of essential items, including nutritional supplements like Grovit multivitamin and Haemoforte syrups.

As a result, caregivers source them from private pharmacies since the government stores rarely provide these particular food supplements.

Ms Sarah Nambi, a mother of five and resident of Semuto Sub-county in Nakaseke District, gave birth to a premature baby at Nakaseke Hospital in 2022.

“My baby was born prematurely and was underweight. The baby later developed breathing complications, but the nurses at the NICU fought to have the baby survive. The baby is very healthy and has not experienced any of the complications that worried our family at the time of birth,” she said.

Ms Nambi added that while her family was worried that they would be referred to a bigger health facility outside Nakaseke District, the baby’s health complications were effectively managed at Nakaseke Hospital, although it strained the family’s budget.

While Malaria is a common ailment among children and adults, the nurses said some babies are born with it resulting in their admission to the NICU.

“Neonatal malaria is transmitted from the mother to the baby before birth. Some mothers fail to treat the malaria that finds its way into the unborn baby. These are among the many complications handled at the NICU,” Ms Nabulya reveals.

Nakaseke Resident District Commissioner Rose Mary Byabasaija said Nakaseke District has two NICUs at Nakaseke General Hospital and one at the privately run Kiwoko hospital founded by the Church of Uganda. She said having two NICUs in one district is a rare opportunity for the people of Nakaseke and the greater Luweero.

“We are saving more lives of the newly born children than several of the other districts simply because of the rare opportunity that was provided to the people by ADARA Development group. We also thank the government for the commitment in improving the health care
services through ensuring that critical services such as the NICU are accessed by the mothers,” she said.

Dr Henry Mwebesa, the Director General of Health Services at the Ministry of Health says that the government has a wider plan to establish special baby care units in 55 general hospitals across the Country depending on the availability of funds.

“Under the MOH 5-year plan, the government plans to ensure that mothers can access neonatal services near to them to bridge the access gap. We shall start by equipping the 17 regional hospitals but roll over the same services to the general hospitals depending on the
availability of funds,” he said briefly in an interview on November 14.