Two weeks of newborn care
Meena
A baby born early needed two weeks of monitored care, and the family was not asked to arrange the cost first.
They started the treatment before anyone asked me how I would pay for it.
Meena's second child arrived several weeks early, last winter. The baby was small, breathing poorly, and needed monitored care rather than a discharge the next morning.
Her husband works as a labourer and the family had no way to arrange the cost of a two-week admission at short notice. Under the trust's maternal and child health programme the admission went ahead while the assessment was still being done, which is the part that mattered — the alternative was a family deciding to take the baby home.
The care was routine once it started: feeding support, warmth, monitoring, and a paediatric review each day. The baby was discharged at a stable weight.
Meena brought the child back for the follow-up visits and for immunisation. She says she understood at the time that the admission was not something she could have paid for, and that nobody at the desk made her say so.