Flying premature babies wrong, says professor

Press, 8 April 1987, Page 28

Flying premature babies wrong, says professor

PA Auckland A leading American pediatrician’s condemnation of the common practice of flying sick premature babies around New Zealand has been supported by an Auckland specialist. Professor Mary-Ellen Avery, professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, said in Wellington that shifting premature babies between hospitals should stop.

Premature babies have had to be moved around the country because of insufficient capacity in neonatal intensive-care units. The associate Professor of Pediatrics at Auckland’s National Women’s Hospital, Dr Ross Howie, said moving premature babies between hospitals had been a cause of concern for years. The babies had to be shifted when keeping them in Auckland’s over-

crowded neonatal inten-sive-care facilities became too dangerous. . Past neglect had left the hospitals with inadequate equipment and a severe nursing shortage.

“These babies need very closely monitored treatment and ibis impossible to give the proper standard of care when several very sick babies have to be looked after by only one nurse,” Dr Howie said.