Words by Smiley Team
Health workers in a remote province high in the Peruvian Andes are trialling a revolutionary method to treat babies with jaundice – with nothing more than a colour-coded ruler, blood reader and carrycots.
Their goal is to screen, diagnose and treat jaundice in 12,000 newborns over the next two years in a country where 90% of the public health facilities lack the capability to adequately diagnose or treat it in newborns.
Jaundice is caused by a build up of bilirubin in the blood and in newborns is common – affecting 60% of all babies worldwide. However, left untreated, it can pose serious health concerns such as cerebral palsy and deafness. In Peru, the rates of jaundice-induced brain damage are 20 times higher than in wealthier countries.
“Jaundice is a serious public health issue here in Peru,” said Fernando Pérez Lastra, national director of non-profit development organisation Inmed Andes, which is launching the two-year project with the backing of Peru’s ministry of health.
“In 2016 and 2017, around 20,000 cases of jaundice were reported [nationwide], but in 2018 that figure went up to 31,000. It’s not clear if that jump was from better reporting or if there were simply more cases – but we need solutions. That’s why an intervention like this is so important and so necessary: we have to identify these cases before complications arise.”
