The Care of the Newborn Reference Manual was written to guide the training of all health care workers in the best practices for the health and survival of newborn infants, particularly in developing countries. The information and skills provided in the pages that follow are essential for those caring for all newborns in the first 28 days of life, whether community-based health workers, nurses, midwives, or physicians.
Training curricula and courses in many developing countries often do not adequately address the specific knowledge and skills needed to care for newborns, and as a consequence, millions of babies die needlessly each year. This manual provides up-to-date, comprehensive, evidence-based information, and defines and illustrates the skills needed to keep newborns healthy, including routine and preventive care as well as early detection and management of life-threatening problems.
The Care of the Newborn Reference Manual also addresses the information that the mother and family must understand to care for their newborn 24 hours a day, for they are the ones who attend to their newborn’s daily needs and problems that occur. Like the health worker, they need to recognize and respond appropriately to danger signs if they arise. In addition to caring for the newborn, health workers have an important role in communicating and demonstrating accurately with mothers and families to ensure that they too know these best practices. Building communication skills—how to listen to mothers and share information with them—is thus another important function of this manual.
Health worker training is only one component of successful newborn and maternal health care. Without the other components—responsible supervision, equipment, a reliable source of supplies, and a system for referring complications—even the best-trained health workers may fail to provide lifesaving care. And even with all these components in place, the demand for services must exist. Health workers must reach out to people in their communities and build relations of trust from the household to local and district-level facilities to create a “continuum of care.”
The authors designed this manual to meet many different needs. It is a technical resource for trainers, tutors, and facilitators and a useful resource for health providers and those who develop or manage comprehensive maternal and child health programs. It can be used in its entirety or adapted to suit a particular audience, need, or country setting. Essential newborn care can be integrated into existing efforts, such as child health, reproductive health, and safe motherhood, or adapted to enhance the newborn component of training programs, to introduce special topics to short in-service programs, or to update a health care provider’s pre-service curriculum.
Above all, this manual should not function as an exclusive resource. By addressing the very special needs of the newborn, Care of the Newborn complements other available guides, such as: WHO’s Integrated Management of Pregnancy and Childbirth (IMPAC) guide Managing Newborn Problems: A Guide for Doctors, Nurses and Midwives, and MNH/JHPIEGO’s Basic Maternal and Newborn Care: A Guide for Skilled Providers.
The authors and staff of the Saving Newborn Lives initiative of Save the Children US hope that the Care of the Newborn Reference Manual will enable health providers, program managers, and decision-makers to give every newborn the best possible chance of survival and support the many mothers and families who depend on their guidance to raise healthy babies.
Please download the full resource to view the entire article.