 Hello friends, I am Dr. Karthik Nagesh from Manipal Hospital's group. I bring you warm greetings on this occasion of the World Prematurity Day. As you all know, premature babies by definition are babies who are born less than 37 weeks of pregnancy. The normal pregnancy is 40 weeks of pregnancy. You have babies who are born mildly premature, who are less than 37 but more than 34 weeks of pregnancy. Some babies are born moderately premature, who are more than 30 weeks at birth but less than 34 weeks of gestation. And babies who are less than 30 weeks are called severely premature. In India, where we live here, about 28 to 29 million babies are born every year. Just think that 13 to 15% of them are born premature. And unfortunately, the mortality or the risk of death and the severe morbidity or the severity of illness is so high in these prematures that close to about 1 million babies across the world die due to the reasons, complications related to prematurity. It's our ardent desire to be able to tell the world about the issues related to prematurity, the reasons to see if we can prevent it, how best to treat these babies, how best to follow up these babies so they don't suffer from physical and other developmental disabilities which they are prone to do otherwise and how to see that these babies grow up into normal healthy individuals which they have the capability of doing so. So if the right care is given to these premature babies when they are born or even before they are born when we enter into the field of what's called fetal medicine perinatology we look after these babies well at that time. These babies can do well and subsequently overcome their challenges and they can be good productive members of the society and they can become young professionals, big businessmen and they can be our next generation is much better, who can do very well. Hi, I'm Dr. Gayatri. I head the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Manipal Hospital. Birth of a child is a very happy occasion but when this happens ahead of time it's a cause for concern. We have come a long way thanks to advances in medications available and to the great strides made by the science of neonatology, the science of the newborn, neonate. We have been able to achieve fantastic results. We at Manipal Hospital are at the receiving end of a lot of complicated pregnancies including prematurity and we are proud to say that we have excellent results in these last 25 years. We've come a long way from worrying about a 34-week-old to now handling 25-week-olds with great ease. On the occasion of the world prematurity day, I would like to thank my colleagues in the department of neonatology for the excellent work they do in transforming these little bundles of joy born prematurely into wonderful, responsible, successful adults of every walk of life.