Friday, November 21 2014

As many as 135 saved premature babies - such is the result of the use of surfactant in Yerevan's hospitals in Apr 2013-Nov 2014. 

Surfactant Survanta is a medicine decreasing the alveolar surface tension. So, it is a key to curing the Respiratory Distress Syndrome, the major killer of premature babies with an extremely low weight.

The project was launched in 2012 by PHARM TRUST Co. Ltd., jointly with the Armenian Association of Neonatal Medicine and Armenia's Health Care Ministry, which added surfactant to its list of essential medicines and launched a national program to supply it to Armenian maternity hospitals. 

The project is financed by Donate Life, a charitable fund chaired by the First Lady of Armenia Rita Sargsyan.  

Official statistics report 450 premature births in Armenia each year. In 250 cases the babies have an extremely low weight and the Respiratory Distress Syndrome.  

Over the last two decades the number of preterm births in the world has increased, with prematurity being the key cause of infant mortality - over 1,000,000 instances a year or 35% of all infant deaths.  

On Nov 21 2014 Erebuni Plaza will host a conference on treatment and prevention of the Respiratory Distress Syndrome in premature infants.  The event will be held in the framework of the Let's Save Hundreds of Lives project on the occasion of the World Prematurity Day.

The key objective of the conference is to better understand the problem of prematurity, to make it better known and to find ways to help premature babies to grow up into healthy people. 

Many distinguished personalities were born prematurely - Napoleon, Newton, Einstein, Rodin, Van Gogh - but despite such a hard start, they all achieved incredible results in life. One more example is Stevie Wonder, who enjoys worldwide fame despite blindness caused by retinopathy of prematurity.