GE Reports | Your source for what's happening at GE.
Hey baby! GE donates $8M for UK maternal hospital
GE’s Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt is in London today to announce a donation of $8 million worth of medical equipment, including fetal monitors, incubators and magnetic resonance scanners, to Homerton University Hospital in Hackney, East London. It’s part of GE’s healthymagination initiative — and part of GE’s commitment to deliver a sustainable legacy to London as a 2012 Olympic and Paralympics sponsor. The pledge will enhance what is already considered to be a center of excellence for the care of premature and sick babies and help to further reduce infant mortality rates across the Borough of Hackney.
Approximately one in nine newborn babies require some form of specialist hospital care in the UK, equating to around one every six minutes, according to CMA Medical Data. Infant mortality rates in the Hackney community have improved but remain above the National average at 6.5 per 1,000 live births — reflecting the high health need in the population. In Hackney, every day, one baby is born weighing less than 5.5 lbs.
Just right: An incubator is one of the most important lines of defense in improving infant mortality rates as an infant’s body temperature drops quickly once outside the mother’s womb.
Says Nancy Hallett, Trust Chief Executive for Homerton Hospital: “The infant mortality rates in our local communities are among the highest in the country. By giving us access to some of the latest equipment, our maternity and neonatal teams will be able to provide state of the art services in a new, modern environment for expectant mothers and their newly born babies throughout all stages of the child bearing process from the earliest scans through to labor, delivery and post delivery.”
Work completes early next year on a new $13.2 million Mother and Baby Center at Homerton, which is the nearest hospital to the 2012 Olympic Park and is the designated Olympic hospital. GE’s legacy donation will be based in that center.
GE Healthcare is donating a range of equipment designed to reduce maternal and infant mortality and improve the general standard and efficiency of care including: tools for workflow planning, maternal and neonatal MR scans, obstetric ultrasound, patient and fetal monitoring, anesthesia delivery, a recovery suite, neonatal monitors, material infant care IT solutions, incubators with an integrated MR capability, ventilators and infection control equipment.
i salute your efforts in the field of modern medicine.