In recent years, the indicators of deaths of premature infants and those with problems at birth have decreased significantly, thanks to the Neonatology Unit of the San Jorge de Pereira University Hospital, which has a qualified human group and equipment biomedical with the most advanced technology that ranks it as the most important in the Coffee Region.
The Neonatology Unit
The Neonatology Unit, which has the largest capacity within the region’s public institutions, receives patients from Chocó, the north of Valle del Cauca, as well as all the municipalities of Risaralda and some from Quindío and Tolima. In the case of Risaralda, the municipalities that refer the most patients are Dosquebradas, Mistrató, Apía and Santuario.
The unit has 37 beds distributed in three rooms: intensive care with 13 beds, intermediate care with 12 and basic care with another 12. In the intermediate and intensive care areas, all incubators have intensive monitoring, one fan for each slot , in addition to stethoscopes, infusion pumps required by patients, ventilators with high-frequency technology and a cerebral hypothermia team for patients who are born asphyxiated.
In the intensive care area, most are premature, with respiratory problems or with severe infections or malformations, these are the three main causes and in fourth place is suffocation.
Regarding the human team, each ward has a head nurse who manages an average of 13 patients, two intensive care assistants who are responsible for an average of six to seven patients, a respiratory therapist for the entire unit, a speech therapist and a physical therapy professional. . Likewise, the support of other professionals, such as audiometry through speech therapy and all subspecialties such as pediatric nephrology, pediatric cardiology, pediatric pneumology and pediatric infectious diseases.
Javier Alejandro Gaviria Murillo, manager of the San Jorge Hospital
The manager of the San Jorge Hospital, Javier Alejandro Gaviria Murillo, expressed, “This has given us an excellent experience and significant growth in this area where we have achieved very good indicators in recent years, which has allowed us to save many lives of children in our region, both in the Coffee Region and in neighboring departments.
Julián Grajales, neonatologist at Hospital San Jorge
Julián Grajales, a neonatologist at the Hospital, explained that this unit has the largest number of units in the region, within public institutions, in intensive care, apart from the monitor, there is a ventilator for each intensive care quota that It has the incubator, the stethoscope, the infusion pumps that patients require, within the ventilators there is high-frequency technology and a cerebral hypothermia team for patients who are born asphyxiated.
On the other hand, he indicated that in the intensive care area the majority are premature, with respiratory problems or with severe infections or malformations, these are the three main causes and asphyxia in fourth place.
State-of-the-art technology and a high-quality professional team make the San Jorge Hospital Neonatal Care Unit the most important in the region.
Since 2021, the hospital was given the task of counting the number of deaths leaving this unit, the count was 37 newborns who died the following year, 2022, the result of deaths was 57 and for the year Present, 2023, in month 7, at the end of July the decrease has been 10 deaths. Regarding the decrease in mortality, there has been a team work in terms of adhering to the basic principles of neonatal care and it is the sum of all these actions that have been very well received by the group, which allows the reduction of deaths that They started at 97 per year to 10 deaths in the year 2023.