Thomas M. Berger is a Swiss paediatrician and neonatologist. His postgraduate training began in Switzerland and continued in the USA (residency in paediatrics at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN; fellowship in neonatology at the Harvard Joint Program in Neonatology, Boston, MA; fellowship in paediatric critical care at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC). After returning to Switzerland, he led the Neonatal and Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Children’s Hospital in Lucerne for almost 20 years.

Since 2012, he has visited several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to assess neonatal care (Ivory Coast, the Gambia, Namibia). In 2017, together with his wife Sabine (a paediatric nurse), he founded NEO FOR NAMIBIA – Helping Babies Survive. This Swiss NGO helps to improve neonatal care in Namibia by providing affordable and robust equipment, ensuring thorough training of local health care professionals, and measuring impact with appropriate statistics. Following sustained reductions of mortality rates by more than 50% at the State hospitals in Rundu and Katima in the poor northern regions of the country, successful interventions are now brought to additional hospitals in Namibia.

Thomas M. Berger is convinced that mothers and babies in many other low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) could benefit from similar programs. The potential impact on the under-five mortality rate would be enormous since almost 50% of deaths in children at less than five years of age occur in the neonatal period.