Care for children
With the Queen Fabiola University Hospital for Children (QFCUH) and the paediatric departments of the Saint-Pierre and Iris Sud Hospitals, the Iris Network offers three complementary centres for paediatric care in the Brussels-Capital Region.
Each of the Iris Network paediatric care centres plays a crucial role in providing local services and primary care:
- from the first day of life, with around 10,000 births a year in its maternity units, with all 3 sites awarded the “Baby-friendly Hospital” label;
- in paediatric A&E, with around 75,000 children attended;
- in general clinic, with more than 200,000 paediatric consultations a year, including consultations without appointments every day of the week for conditions requiring rapid medical attention;
- in hospital admissions, with around 10,000 paediatric admissions a year for medical and surgical treatment offered in a welcoming environment for children and their family.
In paediatrics, as in other disciplines, care takes a multidisciplinary approach. The key role played by medical expertise and appropriate nursing care is combined with and supported by other medical staff: psychologists, physiotherapists, dieticians, speech therapists, social workers and others.
The Iris Network pays attention to the way children are welcomed: the permanent presence of parents is encouraged; pain management is a constant preoccupation; playrooms and schooling inside the hospital help create a friendly atmosphere and a natural link between everyday life and hospital stay.
We have developed a policy reference document that is key to ensuring that the young patients we treat receive the best possible care. The Network seeks to consolidate its paediatric approach by bringing together all its paediatric surgeons in a single department: given the limited number of specialists working in this field, it is essential that their work is correctly coordinated so that they are able to meet the requirements of all the Iris Network sites.
The QFCUH is a hospital dedicated entirely to the treatment of children and is recognised by the Free University of Brussels as their academic reference centre for paediatrics.
Its services are available to all Belgium’s paediatricians and it collaborates widely with Saint-Pierre University Hospital, the Erasmus Hospital and the Iris Sud Hospitals for the Brussels region, as well as hospitals outside of Belgium. It provides specialists in different fields of children’s medicine who are able to offer the most advanced care to those young patients who are in need of it. The QFCUH has a paediatric intensive care unit, a paediatric oncology unit, a dialysis centre for children and, like the CHU Saint-Pierre, a neonatal intensive care unit. The paediatric departments at CHU Saint-Pierre, the Paul Brien site at CHU Brugmann and the Iris Sud Hospitals at Etterbeek-Ixelles also offer specialist consultations in a number of fields: neuropaediatrics, pneumology, cardiology, gastroenterology, infectious diseases, and so forth.
The paediatric lab - a centre of excellence
The QFCUH (ULB-VUB) Paediatric Laboratory, located alongside the hospital in the Queen Élisabeth Foundation is, by volume, Belgium’s leading laboratory offering newborns high-level screening for metabolic and genetic disorders. Two mass spectrometers make it possible to screen for a large number of ailments from the fifth day of life, providing a spectra of all amino acids and blood organic acids from a drop of blood on blotting paper. Its high-level work is recognised both in Belgium and abroad. This laboratory, which is key to QFCUH’s scientific expansion, also comprises several leading research units including immunology, inflammation and nutrition.