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on April 25, 2013
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The Healthy Newborn Network Blog provides timely information and insights from the global newborn health field and seeks to promote dialogue on important newborn health issues. The blog is a platform for the HNN Editors and guest contributors to post commentaries on current happenings in the newborn health field. The content of each post and comments expressed on the HNN blog are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily represent the views and opinion of the HNN or its Partner Organizations. >>Read a note on leaving comments
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it surprises me and also tilts my mind to believe that statements and policies made by WHO are not based on solid grounds, it is just few years...
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Warm greetings from Oz! Great article Gary - we all need access to information like this.
Kind Regards, Julieanne Hensby
The newborn period is probably a complicated time for a baby and its parents. Lack of knowledge in caring for newborns properly may be an important factor behind the largest share of child death in Bangladesh by newborns, which is during the first 28 days of life.
Newborn care is essential in helping to prevent many causes of newborn deaths. Particular focus needs to be given to accessing quality emergency care for sick newborns, care for low birth weight babies and essential newborn care for all newborns so that they don’t fall sick and if they do, the right treatment can be provided.
The WHO estimates that approximately one to five percent of babies will require resuscitation at birth and many of them may die or suffer long-term disabilities if not resuscitated in the first minute of life (the Golden Minute). In Bangladesh, 10% of the babies born suffer from breathing difficulties or birth asphyxia, which can be addressed using a simple bag-mask resuscitation technique. Often oxygen and other complex techniques aren’t necessary to save most of these newborns.
Save the Children in Bangladesh has been rolling out the Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) training curriculum specially to address this newborn complication since August 2011. Currently, 15,594 health workers from public, private and NGOs have completed traninig. A total of 30000 caregivers across country are set to be trained. Additionally, this training has also been incorporated in pre-service and in-service curriculums.
The State of the World's Mothers report, released by Save the Children, presents new data on the staggering toll of newborn deaths on the first day of life. The report also shares stories from mothers and families affected by this tragedy, in the United States and around the world. This is one of those stories, by mother Angela from Oregon. She tells the story of her daughter Charlotte, who would be celebrating her third birthday next week. Originally published in her blog, cross-posted with permission.
This blog was originally published by Impatient Optimists. Written by Gary Darmstadt.
Where is the best place on earth to be a mother? Save the Children’s report, State of the World’s Mothers, released today gives us the answers. You will also find the extreme opposite—the worst place in the world for mothers and children. In both cases, the report makes clear that the state of the world’s mothers is about the state of the world overall. As Melinda Gates notes in the foreword to the report, when we invest in women, we invest in the health and lives of children and improve the human condition. The health of women and children are inextricably linked.
This is the 14th annual State of the World’s Mothers report which sheds light on these issues, but this year breaks them down even more, for the first time specifically revealing the risks during those critical 24 hours after birth (the "first moments", notes the report) – the birth day. It’s a day when mothers should be celebrating but, unfortunately, it’s also a day in many countries where mothers and newborns face the greatest threats to survival.
“It’s a day when mothers should be celebrating but, unfortunately, it’s also a day in many countries where mothers and newborns face the greatest threats to survival.”
We have the opportunity to save millions of lives if the global community comes together on behalf of mothers and newborns.
This report gives us hope that it is possible to give a newborn a better chance of survival. It highlights four simple, life-saving treatments that if taken to scale could save more than one million newborns each year:
It’s equally important to ensure that we continue to focus on safe care for women during pregnancy and childbirth and to increase the number of health workers in regions of the world where there are shortages.
“This report gives us hope that it is possible to give a newborn a better chance of survival.”
The release of this report and this information is monumental, considering that a decade ago we barely understood the causes of newborn mortality and were intimidated by what was perceived to be a need for highly specialized care for a newborn. We now know that is not true.
It is heartening for me to see this inspired commitment to newborn health and the critical connections made between the health of women and newborns. This report, coming on the heels of the Global Newborn Health Conference and paving the way for the Women Deliver Conference, keeps mothers and newborns front and center, a place they deserve to be.
A healthy start to life paves the way for a healthy childhood with more opportunities for a good education, which then leads to healthy, productive adults, contributing to stronger economies and having healthy babies themselves. It’s a virtuous cycle, with healthy newborns at the nexus of the continuum.
We now have the opportunity to ensure that each baby born around the world has the pleasure of celebrating his or her first birthday, then the fifth, then the tenth, and on into adulthood. We have the chance to rally on behalf of women and girls as well. Now is the time to focus on saving the lives of our mothers and newborns.
This blog was originally publish on the EVERY ONE Campaign.
It is simple math – Stronger mothers mean stronger children.
When a mother is physically well-developed, well-nourished and has a supportive social structure around her, she is more likely to be educated, marry later, be financially stable and make healthier choices for her children.
The result? Children who are more likely to go to school, have better learning outcomes, eat more nutritious food and contribute more effectively to their country’s economy when they grow up.
The key to driving this change begins with empowering women in communities. In Bangladesh, girls marry very early both because of dowry payments are less for younger brides, and because of the fear of harassment of unmarried girls. Early marriage means girls stop going to school, fail to reach their educational potential and are forced to work and have children early.
Across the South Asia region, early child marriage and childbearing is by far the most prevalent in Bangladesh, where 66 per cent of women are married before age 18 – half of those by age 15. About 40 per cent of women give birth before their 18th birthday.
As girls are not fully developed in their teenage years, they are more likely to die from pregnancy complications. In fact, early pregnancy is the biggest killer of teenage girls worldwide, with one million dying or suffering serious injury, infection or disease due to pregnancy or childbirth every year, according to Save the Children’s ‘Every Woman’s Right: How family planning saves children’s lives’, launched in June 2012.
The risk of death cannot be understated for girls who are bearing children. Girls under age 15 are five times more likely to die in pregnancy than women in their 20s. Girls age 19 and below are still twice as likely to die in pregnancy as women in their 20s.
The government of Bangladesh recognises this, making it illegal for parents to marry off children under age 18. However, without a supportive environment that motivates parents to wait for longer before marrying their daughters off, child marriage rates will remain at this intolerable level.
Marrying later is just half the battle. In addition to allowing girls to develop fully into women before childbirth, women also need access to family planning services. A baby born with less than a two-year space from an older sibling is twice as likely to die before their first birthday as a baby with more than a two-year age gap from an older sibling in Bangladesh.
Across the world, 222 million women who don’t want to get pregnant don’t have access contraception. This year, an estimated 80 million unintended or mistimed pregnancies will occur in developing countries. Frontline health workers are essential to advice women on family planning, protecting both women and their children.
Bangladesh’s reduction in maternal and child health has been a story of success in South Asia, on track to achieving UN MDG child and maternal mortality reduction targets, but 133,600 children still die before their fifth birthday and 1-in-170 women run a lifetime risk of dying in childbirth or from pregnancy complications. Reducing early child marriage and childbearing while increasing women’s access to modern contraceptives and family planning services not only empowers women to make better choices for themselves and their families, it also helps prevent thousands from dying needlessly each year. It is simple math.