The $50,000 grant supported the purchase of two high frequency oscillatory ventilators to help treat approximately 450 infants hospitalized in the NICU each year. This critical component to the NICU can reduce ventilator-associated lung injury by providing a constant distending pressure and normalizing the end expiratory lung volumes.
This grant has increased significance for WRI because Detroit suffers from an infant mortality rate that is twice the national average. A March 2014 report found that 15 out of every 1,000 babies die in Detroit, making for a worse infant mortality rate than that experienced in Bulgaria, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Russia, and numerous other oppressed and semi-colonial countries. WRI will continue to support the efforts of the countless of hospitals around the country working to solve this serious problem.
