The new born in the hands of the medical personnel
A mother aged 41, under COVID-19 treatment in Rugerero health centre currently serving as COVID-19 treatment centre in Rubavu district-Western Province was blessed with a baby boy, the Rwanda Biomedcial Centre has said.
“The child was born in very good condition. He is fine and mother doing very well,” Menelas Nkeshimana, in charge of COVID-19 Case management in Rwanda told KT Press.
“With our Apgar Scoring, upon birth, he scored 9 and after five minutes, he scored 10 out of ten.”
The Apgar score is a simple method of quickly assessing the health and vital signs of a newborn baby. It was created by Dr. Virginia Apgar in 1952.
According to Dr. Nkeshimana, “a child who scores 9 at birth is really healty. One starts to be worried if a child scores 7 or below.
After the baby adjusts to the outside temperature, he/she is again tested and some signs like crying indicate that he is fine indeed.
Back to this case in Rugerero, Nkeshimana said that the mother has been at this centre for a while. She came while expectant. She will have to stay with the baby at this centre until she recovers.
“This will require the mother to be really careful. We shall test the child to confirm he is not COVID-19 positive and will make sure that he does not contract it,” he said.
A case in France was reported according to which a baby was born with COVID-19 contracted from the mother.
However, Nkeshimana said that this is yet an unconfirmed report.
“Some diseases are transmissible, but on COVID-19 this has not been confirmed yet,” he said.
In Rwanda, COVID-19 confirmed cases increased to 1,473 including 699 active cases on Thursday. The active cases include the mother of the newborn baby.
Recoveries constitute the biggest cases with 770 recovered patients, including 18 on Thursday.
In Rwanda, there have been 4 victims of COVID-19 including a police and a military officer respectively who were serving in peacekeeping mission at the time when they contracted the virus.
The list also includes two old men aged 65 and 78-year-old respectively.
