Nepal: USAID launches Health for Life

Nepal HNN Team

The programme aims to strengthen the Government of Nepal’s capacity to plan, manage and deliver high quality and equitable family planning, maternal, newborn and child health services.

India Bends Curve on Child Health

India HNN Team

One of the major challenges is that 50% of all child mortality in India happens in the first 28 days of life. A prevalent myth is that to save newborns, sophisticated hospitals and intensive care units are needed. But this isn’t the case, experts say.

Conference: Call to Action – Child Survival and Development for Every Child in India

India

The event followed on the heels of last month’s Africa Leadership for Child Survival meeting in Addis Ababa, where 20 African countries agreed on their own set of targets for child survival.  

Food giants still flouting code on promoting baby milk formula in developing countries

Pakistan HNN Team

Research in Pakistan finds companies giving free gifts and misleading literature to mothers and health workers.

Pakistan: Breastfeeding in first hour of birth can save 53,000 annually: Report

Pakistan HNN Team

"Despite all the benefits of breastfeeding, just over a quarter of Pakistani children are breastfed exclusively.”  

Sharp fall in breastfeeding figures makes Asia Pacific “biggest cause for concern” – report

Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Vietnam HNN Team

But countries such as India, China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam “have made no progress on improving exclusive breastfeeding, despite having some of the highest burdens of child mortality,” said the report.    

Baby health crisis in Indonesia as formula companies push products

Indonesia HNN Team

Indonesia’s child mortality rates, at 35 per 1,000, are high anyway, but in the lowest wealth quintile, mortality is nearly five times higher than in the wealthiest.

India: More stillborn babies were delivered in 2012 in district

India HNN Team

"Our aim is to bring stillbirths significantly down in the next few years. This can only be done when more pregnant women start receiving pre-delivery or antenatal care (ANC) right from the conception stage."  

India’s New Child Survival Plan

India HNN Team

The government gave out an order to create a secretariat for a multistakeholder coalition that would oversee the implementation of RMNCH+A. Rajiv Tandon, Save the Children India’s senior health advisor, is the secretariat’s coordinator.  

Pakistan Makes Renewed Effort to Reduce Child and Maternal Mortality

Pakistan

Achieving the MDG will require an average annual rate of 14.2 per cent reduction of mortality among children less than five years between 2011 and 2015, which is almost six times the one achieved until 2011, the report says.