Newborns are helpless, parents are restless and the machines beep.
There are tubes, ventilators, blue lights to cure jaundice.
Everything happens in the Alfredo da Costa Maternity Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (MAC).
In MAC, every year 6000 babies are born, about 6% of all country’s births. About 150 of newborns in MAC weight less than 1500 grams. Since 2007 this unit is part of UNICEF’s “Baby-friendly hospitals”, an initiative where promoting breast-feeding is a golden rule.
Meanwhile the maternity-hospital services were suspended as the portuguese economic crisis is pushing the Government to close the oldest working unit in Portugal.