Information on the number, timing, and causes of stillbirth and neonatal death, as well as the care received by each mother and baby, is crucial for planning and delivering high-quality health services.
While data availability and quality have improved in recent years, there are still big gaps in indicators for newborn care. The Every Newborn Action Plan Measurement Improvement Roadmap details the challenges in measurement and provides a multi-year, multi-partner pathway to improving metrics, including testing and standardizing indicator definitions and developing new tools.
71
percentage of newborn deaths that are preventable with access to quality health care
1/3
babies do not have a birth certificate by their first birthday
10
number of priority Every Newborn indicators identified
All data on this page represents the most recent data available, unless otherwise noted. Please visit our Newborn Numbers page and download the Excel spreadsheet to explore the data further.
More information
See Newborn Numbers for more newborn health specific epidemiology including rates, trends, and causes of death.
Epidemiology is the “study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events (including disease), and the application of this study to the control of diseases and other health problems.” Epidemiology examines how health conditions are distributed among a population and seeks to understand the risks or causes associated with those conditions.
The numbers of stillbirths and neonatal deaths, and the causes, are generated through modeled estimates using information from national civil registration databases, household surveys, surveillance systems, and special studies. High-quality, universal birth and death registration are required to provide nationally representative, timely data, and to signify a shift in social norms to value counting every newborn baby and stillbirth. Increasing global momentum to improve the data is important, and highlights the human face of those who are counted the least—newborn babies and stillbirths.
