PHOTOS: The moms (and dads) of Ivory Coast are falling in love with kangaroo care
Many low-resource areas of the world are short on medical technology, including incubators. So why not turn parents into pseudo-incubators? When a baby is born prematurely, a good way to help the baby survive and thrive is simply to hold it close to a parent's naked chest. No technology needed!
That's the essence of kangaroo care.
It's a method of holding the baby, clad only in a diaper, right up against a parent's bare chest for skin-to-skin contact. In 1978, physician researchers Edgar Rey Sanabria and Héctor Martínez-Gómez introduced the technique at the maternity ward of the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Bogota, Colombia. They were hoping to find a way to reduce the country's high death rate for premature infants — approximately 70% at the time.
The name conjures up the way that kangaroo moms hold their offspring in their pouch.
Formerly, these premature babies were placed in incubators — when they were available — to control the infants' temperatures, provide an optimal amount of oxygen and keep them away from disturbing loud noise and bright lights. But resource-poor countries have
