On the back of the Doritos bag...

[lwuertz]

Yes, I'm sure Doritos are not the greatest thing to be eating... and now I think I might just hate them. This is was on the back of the bag:

Doritos recognizes those who do something

Kathryn Cunningham
Age: 22
State: PA
Power Up Gambia

Imagine having to perform a difficult emergency medical procedure by candle light. This was Kathryn's reality while volunteering at a Gambian hospital. After witnessing a senseless death because an incubator lacked continuous electricity, she decided to act. Kathryn founded Power Up Gambia with the mission of providing sustainable solar energy to hospitals and clinics in Gambia and educating US youth about renewable energy, African culture and the importance of giving back. This summer, Power Up Gambia installed 72 life-saving solar panels in Gambia.



Renewable energy is great, but why don't they just give the baby to the mom or hold the baby themselves to keep their temp up if they don't have a consistent source of energy to power an incubator? I mean who watches a baby freeze to death in an incubator?

[laralee16]

Originally Posted by lwuertz

why don't they just give the baby to the mom or hold the baby themselves to keep their temp up if they don't have a consistent source of energy to power an incubator?

Are you crazy, you cant trust a mother with her own child, she might drop it!!

:P

[barefootpoetry]

Because nature's so-called "perfect design" is nothing compared to machines. Duh.

[DBZ]

Surely the issue had to be more then just temp. Even people in Gambia have hearts and are intelligent.

[Defenestrator]

Whoa. There is an icky undertone to this thread. I don't quite know how to name it, but something along the lines of some pretty big assumptions being made about the difference between the needs of industrialized vs. developing countries, even racism. I'm not picking on anyone in particular, but think about it.

There is no reason why a baby born anywhere in the world shouldn't have the best medical care possible. If the resources exist to run a NICU in a regional health center (and even the poorest countries typically have modern-style hospitals in the bigger cities), then that NICU shouldn't be crippled by an unreliable power grid. What if an American baby were born at 24 weeks and on a ventilator. Would you get all high and mighty and say "Duh! Why doesn't she just give the baby mouth to mouth!" when the power goes out here?

[earthmama369]

Because sometimes it's not enough and an incubator will save a life. I'm pretty sure she didn't watch a healthy full term baby die simply because no one thought to pick it up and cuddle it. If you're in an area where finances may be an issue, then don't you think they'd be saving the incubator for someone who really needed it anyway? Incubators don't just provide warmth, they can have the hookups for oxygen, sensors, etc. -- all sorts of equipment that can rely on the power grid.

[LionTigerBear]

Yeah, I don't see what's wrong with incubators? The baby who died in one when the power died, I'm sure they didn't watch it die and just do nothign about it, it probably happened quickly when no one was watching-- I mean it's very likely that if they don't have the money for incubator power, that they are also understaffed! There are usually a LOT of babies and not enough hands to go around.

And further more, how do you know the baby isn't an orphan? How do you know the baby's mother didn't also die, how do you know the baby doesn't have some kind of contagious disease? Or so many other factors . . .

I agree that it is really irritating when parents are kept apart from their babies for no good reason, because come medical staff don't trust nature or the power of a mother or father's touch or whatever-- and that happens anywhere in the world, of course-- but that doesn't mean there aren't really good justifiable uses for baby incubators!!! Good heavens, as the mother of a gestating 26-week-old fetus, I most certainly want my local hospital to be equipped with some, wouldn't you???

[lovebugmama]

How can somebody who is 22 years old deciding to take action to help others be a bad thing? I don't understand why anyone would think this is a bad thing. It's possible that there wasn't a Mom to hold this poor baby. I applaud Kathryn Cunningham for doing SOMETHING, regardless of whether it agrees with my AP ideals. Good for her and good for Doritos for giving this some attention and helping raise funds for the cause.

[rachelsmama]

I kind of get what the OP is worried about I think. There have been countless cases where children have been the victims of the assumption that the high tech. aid being sent from North America was superior to the low tech way of doing things. Sometimes high tech is better, but sometimes it's dangerous. For babies who can breath on their own kangaroo care is often better than an incubator, even if they're really tiny. I agree that reliable power is a really good thing in a health center, and will save the lives of many babies who are too immature for kangaroo care, but it's quite possible that the incubators will be over-used.

[lwuertz]

Originally Posted by rachelsmama

I kind of get what the OP is worried about I think. There have been countless cases where children have been the victims of the assumption that the high tech. aid being sent from North America was superior to the low tech way of doing things. Sometimes high tech is better, but sometimes it's dangerous.

This is the original feeling I got after reading the bag. I wasn't trying to be racist or suggest that developing countries shouldn't get aid.

[stik]

I think it's easy to read too much into a blurb on the back of a doritos bag. Hospitals need reliable power. The baby's death may have been what galvanized this young women into action, and it makes a gripping PR story, but it absolutely is not the only problem an unstable power grid can cause for a hospital, or the only death.

[lwuertz]

Also, I wanted to say that having never had a baby in a hospital or been to see one in there, I honestly thought that incubators were just for keeping babies warm.

I guess I just believe in the natural course of things happening. I think technology is overused here and that in exporting our technology to various parts of the world we often do more harm than good by erasing centuries of traditions that have worked.

My midwife worked in the Philipines and told me countless stories of the people coming to their clinic that wanted to be just like Americans... for example, feeding their babies formula that they could not afford and so would water down leading to malnurished babies, when they had perfectly designed breastmilk for free.

And as I was trying to say in my original post, renewable energy and "doing something" are not bad things by any means.

[Haselnuss]

Are you opposed to the use of ventilators for preemies who would die without them?
Now, it could be that you're right, and the baby could have been saved simply by being held - in which case, it's an outrageous case of over-dependence on technology overriding people's basic common sense. It still seems more likely to me, though, that the baby required more than just warmth to survive.
Blindly accepting something just because it comes from another culture is, in my opinion, just as foolish as blindly rejecting it for that reason. That goes both for other countries ("let's use formula/circumcise/whatever because the Americans do") and for us! Sometimes high-tech measures actually do save lives (although they're often credited with saving lives they didn't), and certainly people in the developing world have as much right to access them as we do.
I suppose it can be hard to appreciate the situation of those who don't have enough access to medical technology, when we have the opposite problem -too much of it, forced down our throats - but their problem is still real.

[mama2mygirl]

:

Originally Posted by DBZ

Surely the issue had to be more then just temp. Even people in Gambia have hearts and are intelligent.

[mama2mygirl]

Originally Posted by lwuertz

Also, I wanted to say that having never had a baby in a hospital or been to see one in there, I honestly thought that incubators were just for keeping babies warm.

I guess I just believe in the natural course of things happening. I think technology is overused here and that in exporting our technology to various parts of the world we often do more harm than good by erasing centuries of traditions that have worked.

My midwife worked in the Philipines and told me countless stories of the people coming to their clinic that wanted to be just like Americans... for example, feeding their babies formula that they could not afford and so would water down leading to malnurished babies, when they had perfectly designed breastmilk for free.

And as I was trying to say in my original post, renewable energy and "doing something" are not bad things by any means.

I think that before you judge someone it's important to be informed.

[Zan&Zav]

when my baby was first in his incubater his nerve endings were so close to the skin that the shock of even being touched could cause his heartrate to drop and him to stop breathing.

[lwuertz]

Yes, I'm the insensitive, uninformed, heartless, snobby, overanalyzing, racist, etc. that you've all pointed out so thoroughly with your comments. Can we please forget I posted this thread now and move on?

[AstridS]

Originally Posted by lwuertz

Yes, I'm the insensitive, uninformed, heartless, snobby, overanalyzing, racist, etc. that you've all pointed out so thoroughly with your comments. Can we please forget I posted this thread now and move on?

No you're not.

However, I think that in a place like Gambia the incubators will probably be reserved for babies with really big problems. Like 20-something weekers or sick babies. I assume that a hospital that doesn't have a steady power supply is also lacking a lot of other equipment. So they probably don't use the few avaliable incubators just for keeping term babies warm.