Benefits of phototherapy:

Around 481,000 term and near-term babies are born with high bilirubin levels per year around the world. Around 24% of these people die, while around 63,000 have mild to extreme morbidity. 75 percent of the 481,000 babies were born in Sub-Saharan Africa and India, two regions of the world plagued by power outages. The conventional way of treating jaundice in newborns is by using electric blue light sources. Using the blue light sources in these third-world countries is often hindered by the financial situation of the country and the unstable supply of electricity throughout the country. Another way of treating jaundice in newborns is to expose the baby to regulated sunlight which can also lower the levels of the bilirubin in the baby. Research have shown that at the same light intensity from a phototherapy unit and regulating sunlight. Using sunlight has isomerized the bilirubin 4 times more than the phototherapy unit when exposed to both for the same time. The use of sunlight to lower bilirubin levels dates to 1958 and contributed to the creation of phototherapy fluorescent blue light tubes. These lamps, on the other hand, are costly, necessarily require light intensity measurements, and require precise information for the light to be used to its full potential. Babies are not treated if they are not used properly. If ultraviolet and infrared rays are filtered out, sunlight is a natural, cheap, sustainable way of providing phototherapy to millions of babies in the developing world, and who are ultimately dying from something so preventable.