Karleen - Your expertise and support is blessed. The situation there is 
tragic, overwhelming and unconceivable. Gratefully, Toby

-----Original Message----- 
From: Karleen Gribble
Sent: Sunday, April 10, 2016 7:28 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: High quality baby weigh scale urgently for refugees

Hi All,

As many of you know, infant and young child feeding in emergencies is one of 
my areas of expertise.
I have recently been in Europe doing research on the IYCF-E response, 
training people and also helping out volunteer IBCLCs, LLLLs and others who 
are working with refugee mothers and babies. I spent some time up near the 
Greek border with Macedonia with a group that is running a mother baby tent 
in a camp called Eko. Eko has 2000-3000 people in it, and hundreds and 
hundreds of mothers with babies and young children. The conditions are 
dreadful, very many mothers are fully or partially bottle feeding and pretty 
much all refugee mothers giving birth are being given caesars and all are 
advised to formula feed for the first few days after birth. The only group 
providing support for infant feeding in this camp is a tiny volunteer group 
called Nurture Project International 
http://nurtureprojectinternational.org/.

When I was in EKO with NPI I met mothers and babies in very bad 
circumstances.

One mother had given birth to her baby on in no man's land between Syria and 
Turkey. She and her husband and 6 children only just made it to Greece as 
the boat they were on sunk just as they approached land. When I met them, 
the little baby was 1 mo and weighed only 2.5 kg. He was "feeding 20x a day" 
and "very sleepy." I watched a feed and he wasn't strong enough to feed very 
well and you could see that he had lost weight or not grown- he had those 
saggy thighs that babies get when they are in real trouble. He also had a 
chest infection. I instigated some support for this mum, providing infant 
formula with an acceptable level of safety, and developed a plan involving 
improving breastfeeding efficiency and hand expressing. Unfortunately, I had 
to leave the next day, but others have been providing assistance to this mum 
since I left (including Lactnetter Toby Gish's niece!). However, it has been 
an uphill battle for a variety of reasons and things are still not going 
well for this little bub- you cannot imagine how difficult it is for mothers 
in this place.  One of the barriers to his recovery has been the inability 
to get accurate weights. The scales that they have been able to access have 
been terribly inaccurate and it's just not good enough. The scale they 
currently have is worse that useless- giving weights that vary by more than 
500g between weights. This baby (and the other malnourished babies there) 
really need the people helping them to have the necessary tools.

So, someone from Boston is leaving to come to this camp next week. Somehow, 
they need to have a good scale. Does anyone have a good scale (one that they 
would have no qualms using themselves with a very sick baby) that they no 
longer require that can be sent to this volunteer coming over next week or 
alternatively $$ to buy one?

Please contact me privately if you can help.

Karleen Gribble
Australia




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