BENGALURU: For families dependent on daily wages, the birth of a child can swiftly shift from joy to anxiety when premature delivery or medical complications demand costly neonatal intensive care. In an effort to ease this burden, a recent corporate–nonprofit collaboration has funded critical treatment for 20 severely ill newborns across five states.The initiative supported more than 700 cumulative days of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) care for infants from economically vulnerable households in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. The programme focused on families earning less than ₹15,000 a month, for whom private NICU treatment is often unaffordable.Newborns affected by extreme prematurity (under 30 weeks’ gestation), respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) and neonatal sepsis were among those who received care. “Without immediate NICU intervention, survival rates for these conditions are critically low. The funding covered surfactant life-saving medication for newborns with underdeveloped lungs, oxygen therapy, cardiac monitoring, and specialised nutritional care for low-birth-weight babies,” said Tanya Bali, co-founder and chief catalyst, Neonates Foundation of India.The support was made possible through a partnership between AI-native automotive platform company Tekion and the Neonates Foundation of India. “At Tekion, we believe technology serves a greater purpose when it enables positive human impact,” said Aravind Gowda, senior director, Tekion. “Partnering with the Neonates Foundation allowed us to intervene at the most critical moment of life—birth. We are humbled to have played a part in giving these infants a fighting chance at survival and relieving their parents of an impossible financial burden.”Babies of low-income families in need of NICU support were identified by a panel of medical experts. Many were born too early or too small to breathe independently, while others developed serious infections soon after birth. Some had extremely low birth weight requiring constant monitoring and specialised care, while a few were born with heart-related complications or experienced pauses in breathing due to extreme prematurity. In certain cases, infants did not receive adequate oxygen at birth and required urgent life-saving intervention—critical conditions that demanded advanced NICU care and round-the-clock medical supervision made possible through the collaboration.
