Ms Pascal Paul, a nurse in the St Boniface neonatal intensive care unit in Haiti, adjusts the eye mask of a newborn receiving phototherapy in Firefly.
DtM is proud to report some updated stats on Firefly!
Break-Even: Recent clinical results show that compared to conventional overhead phototherapy, Firefly’s high-intensity, double-sided lighting significantly reduces phototherapy treatment times and in some cases averts the need for expensive and risky exchange blood transfusions. The Firefly bassinet, which is designed to isolate newborns during treatment, reduces rates of newborn cross-infection. Based on these results, we estimate that the Firefly device pays for itself in health care system savings within the first year of use.
Impact: As of December 2014, DtM distribution partner Thrive Networks and Vietnamese manufacturing partner MTTS have installed Firefly in ten developing countries across Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, East Timor, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia), Sub-Saharan Africa (Ghana and Burundi), and the Caribbean (Haiti). Over 6,000 newborns have been treated with Firefly. DtM and our partners expect to distribute at least 1,000 Firefly devices, reaching over 500,000 newborns--at a total program cost of $6 per newborn treated.