The NICU Parent Network (NPN) and National Perinatal Association (NPA), stand in solidarity with our European neonatal and perinatal colleagues as they struggle to provide care and support to the most vulnerable, medically fragile babies and their families. We unequivocally support the EFCNI/GLANCE and the UENPS declarations against the invasion of Ukraine.

I am a proud member of the NICU Parent Network’s Executive Board of Directors and cochair of their Standards and Review Committee. I have also worked with the National Perinatal Association and EFCNI in the past so I can speak to how deeply these organizations want to help. My logo (Speaking for Moms & Babies, Inc.) in on both statements in a show of support.

Through these relationships, conversations, and most recently, reports about the vicious bombing of the maternity and children’s hospital in Mariupol, we have learned Ukrainian NICUs are desperately short of oxygen and medical supplies to provide much needed care for their patients. Additionally, we have come to know that many are doing so in makeshift units inside bomb shelters while simultaneously searching for safe evacuation options for these babies. Our community of professional organizations for perinatal health and NICU parent leaders are deeply concerned about the horrors these preterm infants, sick babies, and their parents are enduring. They are indeed the youngest victims of this war.

As our colleagues at EFCNI & GLANCE stated: “No war produces winners or heroes. All it brings about is suffering, loss and trauma. Flight is trauma, battle is trauma. Miscarriage, stillbirth, preterm birth, [or a medically fragile full-term birth are trauma as well. Particularly when this occurs] due to missing access to medical care in resource-poor settings or losing one’s baby in a bomb shelter because there were no facilities to provide medication, warmth, oxygen or sufficient nutritional solutions.”

We cannot accept this happening to our global community of NICU families and we must not allow our physical distance from the war to subdue our desire to act in any capacity to assist and support relief efforts.

As such, we have been notified through EFCNI of the Relief Fund for NICUs in Ukraine, a fundraising effort providing targeted support for the Polish NICU parent organization, the Coalition for Preemies – Koalicja dla wcześniaka. This organization is assisting neonatal intensive care units in Ukraine with resources and transfers of babies out of the war-torn country and into Poland.

YOU CAN DONATE HERE.

We encourage our peers to support this targeted response to the dire needs of NICUs in Ukraine. NPN, NPA, and our NICU community are united with EFCNI in our urgent plea to the international community of political decision makers to:

Immediately end this conflict to save the lives of parents and their vulnerable babies.

Above is the text from the official NPN and NPA joint statement. You can read the link HERE.

Please help if you can. The Relief Fund for NICU’s in Ukraine and the Coalition for Preemies have been making and impact thus far and you can increase their success and help save mothers and babies. I hope this speaks to you as much as it speaks to you.

YOU CAN DONATE BY CLICKING HERE.

Thank you, and please keep these babies and families in your thoughts and prayers.