Milestones & Reacting to Haiti
Posted by eu-wen
Huge milestones for Embrace this week!
Back in the States we have had a poster presentation in Stanford giving us the opportunity to have our data peer reviewed AND (drum roll!) we have put our first 2 babies in our product to be warmed!
Our first baby girl was born on the 4th of March at 9:45am, and our second baby, also a girl, was born the next morning. The pictures below are proudly hung on our office walls. Depending on the frequency of births, we hope to have put ten babies in our product by the end of this month, and eventually an additional 50 babies for the purpose of this feedback study.
Our pride and joy in this progress stands in stark contrast to the frustrations we feel at our current inability to assist in instances of widespread and urgent need. The earthquake in Haiti still has severe effects till today, and it kills us to read stories such as these from doctors on the ground in Haiti where we KNOW that if we had a ready and tested product, we would be of tremendous value to needy families and save lives. But the fact of the matter is that while we have a technology that the Embrace team has personal confidence in, the product remains clinically untested. Doctors we have contacted in Haiti concur with us that despite the obvious need, now is not the time in Haiti to be experimenting with an untested infant warmer, no matter its potential.
If we went ahead anyway and put our product on the ground in Haiti would we be helping and serving babies in need? Yes we believe so. But for a delicate case like Haiti we will only move if we can do so in a way that is thoroughly responsible and in a way that we can guarantee the safety of babies put in our product.
As an organization we have a deeper duty to the bigger picture. Four million newborns die every year, one million in India alone, mostly from preventable or treatable causes. This is the problem that we are seeking to address, and we hope that the logic of this rationale allows us to make the choices and decisions that are right by those who need us the most, regardless the sick feeling we have when the pictures and e-mail from Haiti come streaming in.