A newborn clinging to life through a manual oxygen pump in a Philippines hospital chapel transformed into a neonatal unit died Saturday.
Without power and access to proper medical equipment, doctors were unable to save three-day-old Althea Mustacia, who was born on Nov. 13 with newborn asphyxia, the Associated Press reports. Mustacia’s parents took turn manually pumping oxygen into her body for three days before her heartbeat stopped.
The condition, a failure to begin regular breathing within a minute of birth, is a common cause of newborn death in developing countries, according to the World Health Organization.
[AP]
