Working closely with professionals operating in the fields of neonatal and pediatric surgery has allowed us to understand how often they are faced with incredibly complex and delicate cases, given the very young age of the patients that they treat.

One of Cieli Azzurri’s main objectives is providing support to these incredible professionals, trying to put them in the best possible position to do their job; in some cases, this can take the form of donating high-tech equipment to the facilities within which they operate.

The project “Hi-tech Cradles in the Intensive Care Unit” was born with the objective of donating highly sophisticated surgical cradles to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the Mangiagalli clinic, which is where newborn children in need of a surgical operation are hospitalized. The very young patients in question are often underweight, at times weighing in at less than 1500 grams. It is therefore of the utmost importance that the environment in which they are hospitalized is as stable and safe as possible, as their balance can be broken very easily. This environment should also be complete with the most modern equipment for monitoring basic vital signs, as well as with specialized equipment for external assistance, such as the neonatal ventilator.

Over the last few years, some of the world’s best and most advanced facilities have started adding last-gen surgical cradles to the standard equipment that specialized areas for neonatal surgery are outfitted with. These cradles are built so as to allow doctors to perform surgery directly within them, which in turn allows surgeons to avoid a potentially dangerous transfer to the operating room for their patients. This approach is especially advantageous in cases of particular instability of the patient, given that even a short transfer can break their very fragile balance. Upon learning of their importance, Cieli Azzurri created this project, with the objective of raising enough funds to cover the cost of donating one or more of these cradles to the Mangiagalli Clinic.

As of today, two such cradles have been donated. The first was delivered in 2013, following a private initiative of some of the members of our Board of Directors; for more details, you can read the article “A Hi-Tech Surgical Cradle”. The second of these cradles was donated in 2015, as a result of “Sprintiamo con Cieli Azzurri”, a charity event sponsored and organized by the Rocca family.

Ever since 2013, several surgical operations have been successfully carried out within these cradles. Amongst these, one stands out as being perhaps the most extraordinary: on Christmas Night, in 2016, a "feather" child weighing only 750 grams was successfully operated at the clinic, within one of the cradles donated through this project. TG1, Italy’s leading news programme, dedicated a piece to this case at the time, a montage of which can be found on our home page.

This case is only one of the many examples that we could give of the impact that this project has had, and will continue to have, on the life of many newborns. It is a point of pride, for our Organization, to have contributed to making the Mangiagalli clinic a point of reference for dealing with cases such as the ones discussed in this article. We plan on furthering this collaboration in the future, offering assistance and support any way we can, be it by donating last-gen pieces of equipment or via some other method. If you would like to help us pursue this objective, kindly visit the “What You Can Do” section of this website.