Cloudnine Group of Hospital begins Neonatal Emergency Transport Service in Bengaluru

Cloudnine Group of Hospitals has started a pilot project ‘Neonatal Emergency Transport Service (NETS)’ in Bengaluru. It is a 24/7 initiative that is designed to provide adequate clinical support required for precious deliveries done in any of the hospitals which themselves may not have sufficient neonatology infrastructure to handle extreme pre-term deliveries. The service was launched on 25th September, 2019.

Requests for retrievals from few hospitals and parents, where the facility to cater to premature babies was not available, led to the launch of this service, which further helped in channelising our efforts to consciously reach out to more hospitals and offer our services for babies in distress.

All the units of Cloudnine would be taking part in the senior consultant rota although the service is currently operational at Cloudnine Jayanagar and Cloudnine HRBR. With 80 beds, a team of 20 neonatologists and more than 100 specialised NICU-trained nursing staff spread across six hospitals, NETS offers advanced care – on time.

Since December 1, 2019, an outrage of neonatal deaths in India were reported from six government hospitals in Rajasthan and Gujarat. Among the factors that have been proved detrimental to child survival are lack of education in the mother, malnutrition (more than half of Indian women are anaemic), age of the mother at the time of birth, spacing and whether the child is born at home or in a facility.

Despite several efforts, one area that has been a neglected subject of attention of our policymakers, government and industry at large is the neonatal transport, in other words providing transport services and right medical care to pre-term babies who are not getting the required clinical treatment they deserve at the time of their birth due to lack of quality NICU infrastructure.