[Problems of neonatal transfer to the pediatric service of the CHU Gabriel Touré of Bamako]

Neonatal morbidity and mortality is a real concern in our context. Several factors including the organization of the reference contribute to it. Our work was aimed at studying the conditions of newborns transfer of the towards the service of pediatrics of teaching hospital Gabriel Touré.Our study proceeded from October 15th, 2006 to January 15th, 2007 in the unit of neonatology of the service of Pediatrics of the CHU of the Hospital Gabriel Touré. It was a cross sectional and descriptive study. All the newborns referred by a health structure were included.We included 760 referred newborns out of 1072 neonatal admissions which means a frequency of reference of 71%. In 91.6% of the cases, the newborn were referred on the very day of their birth. Prematurity (29%), perinatal anoxia (24%), respiratory distress (13.9%) were the main reasons for reference. In no case, the service of pediatrics was contacted in advance by the referring health agent. More than half of the cases (58.6%), the public transport was used. Ambulance car transported 17.4% of the newborns. All the newborns came held in the arms of a member of their family. The referring agent was a physician in 70.3% of cases. Hypothermia was found for all the newborns (759/760) when being received. More half of the newborns (56.4%) had a small weight at birth and the quarter (25.8%) was resuscited. Lethality was 32%. Mother illiteracy, small weight at birth, the outborn birth were factors related to neonatal mortality.In our context, the reduction of neonatal morbidity and mortality has to go through an improvement of the reference system.