Not only are we supporting the babies within our baby wellness clinic on a Tuesday, but we have seen a steady increase in the number of social workers coming to us for help with cases of babies who have been abandoned. There is simply no additional funding from the department to support their social workers increasing cases, which in turn, results in them coming to us for additional support.
Each new baby receives a baby pack from us when they come into the clinic which consists of a tin of infant starter formula (400g), nappies, a blanket, and clothing. Although we try and educate the young ladies of our community, the pregnancy cases are ever increasing, and who to turn to but us. Once our babies reach 6 months old, we put them onto the appropriate follow-on formula to continue helping them grow, providing them with the best nutrition. While formula is a top priority, we also must provide these babies with nappies which is dependent on our availability of funds and donations.
This past quarter we had a few babies who were very ill with pneumonia, requiring us to send them on to hospital. Thanks to our exceptional team in the clinic, we were able to get these babies to hospital quickly. There are many unforeseen circumstances that we face each day, babies becoming ill is just one of them. Malnutrition remains a worry for us, we continue to see mothers bringing in their new-born babies who are clearly showing signs of malnutrition. What often happens is those in extreme poverty feed their babies a bottle of warm tea, we have even had cases of a baby being fed warm water in a bottle.
Thanks to our dedicated home-based care workers, we have been able to stop these trends from spreading further by educating these impoverished families within the community. Our home-based care kits consist of emergency medical and nutritional relief for such cases.