State of neonatal health care in eight countries of the SAARC region, South Asia: how can we make a difference?

State of neonatal health care in eight countries of the SAARC region, South Asia: how can we make a difference? Paediatr Int Child Health. 2015 Jul 27;:2046905515Y0000000046 Authors: Das JK, Rizvi A, Bhatti Z, Paul V, Bahl R, Shahidullah M, Manandhar D, Stanekzai H, Amarasena S, Bhutta ZA Abstract The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is an organization of eight countries - Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. The major objectives of this review are to examine trends and progress in newborn and neonatal health care in the region. A landscape analysis of the current state of neonatal mortality, stillbirths and trends over the years for each country and the effective interventions to reduce neonatal mortality and stillbirths was undertaken. A modelling exercise using the Lives Saved Tool (LiST) was also undertaken to determine the impact of scaling up a set of essential interventions on neonatal mortality and stillbirths. The findings demonstrate that there is an unacceptably high and uneven burden of neonatal mortality and stillbirths in the region which together account for 39% of global neonatal deaths and 41% of global stillbirths. Progress is uneven across countries in the region, with five of the eight SAARC countries having reduced their neonatal mortality rate by more than 50% since 1990, while India (43%), Afghanistan (29%) and Pakistan (25%) have made slow...
Source: Paediatrics and international child health - Category: Pediatrics Tags: Paediatr Int Child Health Source Type: research