Photo of the Week: Newborn Care in Mali

Photo: Joshua Roberts/Save the Children

An eleven-day-old baby is fed expressed breast milk while being cared for at the Kangaroo Care Center at the Gabrielle Traore Hospital in Bamako, Mali. The baby, one of twins of Assata Doumbia, were both born one week premature and weighed 4.1 pounds and the other 4.4 pounds. This center was opened in 2008 through a generous grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of a partnership between Save the Children and the Mali Ministry of Health. It was the first KMC center for premature and underweight babies in Mali. 

According to the recently released State of the Worlds Mother's 2012 report, in Mali only 34 % of newborns are exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life.