Bangladesh has achieved remarkable reductions in maternal and child mortality in recent decades. Reductions in neonatal mortality have not kept same pace, now 61% of deaths among children under 5 occur during neonatal period. The Government of Bangladesh is committed to achieve the target of neonatal mortality rate of 12 per 1000 live births by 2030.
In 2010, the UN Secretary-General’s report, Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, highlighted the burden of women and children lacking access to life-saving commodities. The report called on the global community to work jointly to save 16 million lives by 2015 through increased access to, and appropriate use of, essential medicines, medical devices, and health supplies. Increased access to these essential commodities could effectively address the main avoidable causes of death during pregnancy, childbirth, and childhood.
Bangladesh government adopted evidence-based, newborn death-cause-specific new newborn interventions for national scale-up. In July 2013, the Government of Bangladesh declared its commitment to ending preventable child deaths in the declaration on ‘Ending Preventable Child Deaths by 2035: Bangladesh Call to Action.’ This declaration categorically included essential newborn care, new evidence-based interventions for sick newborns and specialized newborn care at district and sub-district level as the strategy to reduce newborn mortality.
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This is Brief 5 in a series. The other briefs are:
Brief 1: National Newborn Health Program (NNHP) for Ending Preventable Newborn Deaths in Bangladesh
Brief 2: Implementing outpatient management of infections in young infants: Building the skills of union level providers
Brief 3: Facility Readiness and Initiation of Kangaroo Mother Care
Brief 4: Improving newborn care and care-seeking practices in Bangladesh through an SBCC approach
Brief 6: Implementing the Comprehensive Newborn Care Package: Integration and Use of Data in Routine Health Information System
Brief 7: Newborn Health in Urban Bangladesh