This brief details how to take the Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) challenge and provides more information about the intervention.
What is Kangaroo mother care?
Kangaroo mother care – or KMC – is an effective way to help meet a premature baby’s basic needs for warmth, nutrition, stimulation, and protection from infection. Parents of low birthweight (<2500g) or preterm babies (born before 37 weeks gestation) are encouraged to use KMC which involves continuous skin-to-skin contact with the baby for at least 20 hours every day and exclusive breastfeeding.
Why is the KMC challenge important?
Only a very small proportion of newborns who could benefit from KMC receive it. Despite its potential to save thousands of babies every year, KMC has not had widespread scale-up in either high-income or low-income settings. We must raise awareness about the importance of this intervention. We also want to demonstrate the physical reality a woman experiences when she provides KMC to her baby or babies. KMC may be low-cost and low-tech compared to an incubator, but there are still associated costs to the mother, family and healthy system which should be recognized.
More resources
1. See what people say about the KMC Challenge:
2. Post this sticker on Facebook or Twitter after you take the challenge and use the hashtag #KMCchallenge!
