The decrease in neonatal mortality contributes for the increase of children needing more attention to clinical morbidities and to neuro-psycho-motor development outcome. The objective of this study was to discuss the situation of care of children discharged from the Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) in five units from differents regions of the state of Rio de Janeiro. In none of them were found informations regarding the description of those discharged from the NICU. This study revealed restricted access and scarcy organization of the health network for the care of these babies. The care provided is not uniform, with a concentration of specific outpatient clinics for this population in the city of Rio de Janeiro. It was verified professional deficiency in rehabilitation areas, such as motor physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and psychology, and a lack of specialists to provide adequate ofthalmological care, as well as specialistic care for children with hearing loss. The authors discuss possible explanations for this situation and propose the organization of a system of care in grades of complexity to improve the access of these risk children to this kind of specific care, important for early detection of development abnormalities.
Infant development; Organization and administration; Health planning
