Neonatal intensive care unit to be ‘strengthened’

The Neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at the Limassol general hospital is set to be “strengthened” with new equipment and machines, with the funding coming from the Madame Figaro Woman of the year award.

Elema Megalemou Triantafyllidi, president of the Mora Thavmata association, won the award from Madame Figaro for “social contribution”, with the financial benefit of the award now set to be invested into the neonatal intensive care unit.

Health Minister Popi Kanari said “hundreds of newborns are hospitalised every year, and they receive the best possible care during the first days of their lives”.

“The doctors, nurses, and entire staff of the Limassol general hospital NICU fight a difficult fight every day alongside newborns and their parents with the sole aim of winning the battle for life”, she said.

She added, “today we are gathered here to receive valuable and necessary equipment which will strengthen the work which is carried out every day at the NICU”.

A point focused on by Kanari were incubator covers, of which 14 have been bestowed unto the NICU.

She said the covers “are an important part of the individualised neurodevelopmental care which premature newborn babies receive”, and that they are “designed to create an environment reminiscent of a mother’s womb”.

She said they “reduce stress and protect the sensitive eyes of premature newborn babies from intense lighting and, at the same time … enhance the development of their biological clock and the establishment of normal sleep patterns”.

She thanked Triantafyllidi and the Mora Thavmata association for their contributions, saying “all of this could not be done” without them.