Awareness Month and International Prematurity Day 2020

International Prematurity Day and Awareness Month 2020

International Prematurity Day and Prematurity Awareness Month 2020, which were marked this year with the sign of Corona, required us to make adjustments in our activities according to the state of morbidity in the country.

The day the Knesset is closed:

The Knesset Prematurity Day for 2020 was led by MK Michal Shir. On this year's Prematurity Day, a discussion was held in the Labor, Welfare and Health Committee on the impact of dealing with the Corona virus on the care of premature babies in Israel.

In the discussion, important topics were raised such as:

• The continuous series of the Mother's Milk Bank, aligning the issue of a standard for feeding with breast milk as the first line of every premature baby under one and a half kilos who does not have breast milk available from its mother
• Addressing the plight of parents in premature infants and after discharge, which has increased several times during the Corona period, due to social distancing, the lack of a sufficient support environment, prevention of parental visits to premature infants, etc.
• Need to provide continued emotional and mental care to the parents even after release from the hospital, using form 17 from the health insurance funds, until the situation stabilizes or until transfer to continued care in the community.
• Need to find solutions during the winter for RSV vaccinations for premature babies, in cases where the families of the premature babies are in isolation or from the corona virus, and will not be able to bring the premature babies to the vaccination days.
• Need for separate isolation rooms in preemies, where the parents can stay with the prematures, to prevent situations where the prematures are left alone in the preemies for long periods due to isolation or illness of the parents.

There are still open issues that there was no time to discuss, and we hope that this discussion was an opening for further discussions on the subject of the treatment of premature infants and their families and improving the condition of premature infants in Israel.

The Labor Association thanks MK Michal Shir for mobilizing to lead this day in the Knesset, and for continuing to work together with the Forum for Premature Babies, and also to the chairman of the committee, MK Tali Ploskov, for the important discussion and the recognition of the need to continue to raise the issues important to the agenda in other committees as well.

Events of the awareness month for premature babies and their families:

thanks to the existence of The Facebook group for parents of premature babies, we managed to pour content into the month even in a situation of high morbidity in the country. Thanks to the technological means, we were able to create a sense of connection and unity even from a distance.

During the month of November 2020, 4 professional lectures were held for parents of premature babies, by the volunteers of the professional staff of the Lehab association. The lectures dealt with the topics of nutrition and development of premature babies at different ages, and gave parents practical tools to monitor and encourage the normal development of their children.

Awareness month shirts

On the occasion of the month of awareness, and as part of the creation of the community and the feeling of belonging to the association, we went on a spontaneous operation of printing shirts for young prematures and adults (and their families). Despite the logistical complexity that was involved, and despite the lack of infrastructure for automatic trading in the association, the shirt operation was a huge success!

About 230 shirts were ordered by community members of the association, and they were sent to various distribution points in volunteer homes all over the country. T-shirts created a discourse around them that helped raise awareness in society, unit pride grew stronger around everyone's personal story and around the connection to the association, and many parents expressed regret that they missed the registration and would like to continue shopping. She designed the amazing design for us Ifat Southern Zazek, as part of an item done on premature graduates a few years ago.