Saving Babies' Lives by Carrying Them Like Kangaroos

Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) is the brainchild of Colombian pediatrician Edgar Rey, who introduced it to the Instituto Materno Infantil in 1978. It was an idea born out of desperation. The institute served the city’s poorest—those who lived crammed in the rickety, makeshift dwellings in the foothills of the surrounding mountains. At the time this was the biggest neonatal unit in all of Colombia, responsible for delivering 30,000 babies a year. Overcrowding was so bad that three babies would have to share an incubator at a time and the rate of cross-infection was high. Death rates were spiraling and so too was the level of abandonment as young, impoverished mothers, who never even got to touch their babies, found it easier just to take off.