Niloufer Hospital connected to all 42 SNCUs in Telangana

The super-specialty doctors at Niloufer Hospital, through the hub-and-spoke model, would be able to track real-time developmental healthcare parameters of critical pre-term babies admitted to the government-run SNCUs

Hyderabad: To sustain and further improve the gains achieved by reducing infant and maternal mortality rates, the Telangana government has linked all the 42 Special Newborn Care Units (SNCUs) in the districts to a centralized facility at Niloufer Hospital.

The super-specialty doctors at Niloufer Hospital, through the hub-and-spoke model, would be able to track real-time developmental healthcare parameters of critical pre-term babies admitted to the government-run SNCUs in the city and also in the districts.

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The SNCUs, which were expanded from 19 in 2014 to 42 in 2023, are providing all kinds of neonatal care to sick just born infants. These facilities have been developed as separate units are located near to the labor wards in district hospitals.

The sick newborns at SNCU receive critical care and 24-hours monitoring. The centralized facility at Niloufer Hospital, dubbed as a Centre of Excellence, will further provide support to the SNCUs by giving them access to senior multispecialty doctors who will track the development of infants in real time.

“We will provide local doctors in districts who are in-charge of SNCUs with specialty support through video conferencing. Such a concerted effort will definitely go a long way in further reducing infant and maternal mortality rates,” said Superintendent, Niloufer Hospital, Dr T Usha Rani.

The preterm babies in SNCUs do suffer with multiple health complications due to very low birth weight, she said. Morbidity among such infants in SNCUs is very high due to different medical conditions including asphyxia, sepsis, respiratory distress syndrome, hypothermia, hypoglycemia, congenital malformations and prematurity.

“Such infants need specialty care and definitely the new facility at Niloufer Hospital will be able to play its role saving the precious lives,” the Superintendent said.

Efforts are on to take up complicated heart surgeries in infants who are born with congenital heart ailments at Niloufer Hospital.

Health Minister, T Harish Rao, who launched a Centre of Excellence at Niloufer Hospital to provide support to 42 SNCUs on Saturday, said that senior doctors from the hospital will soon start conducting these surgeries.

“Apart from heart surgeries, we are also launching 33 exclusive neo-natal ambulances so that infants are quickly brought to a specialty care. The senior doctors at Niloufer Hospital will guide the doctors at SNCUs in saving the critically ill infants in SNCUs,” Minister said.

The Rs 2 crore facility at Niloufer Hospital will further reduce IMR and MMR in Telangana. So far, the Telangana government has incurred an expenditure of nearly Rs 500 crore only to develop special infrastructure for Mother and Child Health (MCH), he said.