‘Cheap tactics can save babies at birth’

Estimated 28,000 babies die each year on their birthday in Bangladesh even though ‘inexpensive’ strategies could save them, Save the Children says.

The international NGO, however, acknowledged rapid drop in newborn deaths over the past two decades or so.

It released 2013 ‘State of the World’s Mothers’ on Tuesday compiling first-day death rates of 186 countries and providing an annual Mothers’ Index presenting ‘the best and most difficult’ countries in the world to be a mother.

Bangladesh has been ranked 136 among the 176 countries on the mothers’ well-being list based on indicators of maternal health, child mortality, education and levels of women’s income and political status.

India and Pakistan lag behind Bangladesh with 142 and 139 positions while Sri Lanka and Nepal remain much ahead – 89 and 121 respectively.

Finland is the best place in the world for mothers while Democratic Republic of Congo is the toughest.

The report says death of babies aged under one month declined 49 percent in Bangladesh between 1990 and 2011, making it the seventh rapid declining developing country. But premature births, failing to breathe at birth and infections kill the large number of newborns on the first day of birth.

It says that universal access to products that cost between 13 cents and $6 each could save more than one million babies globally a year die on the birth day and suggests donors to invest more on newborn health.

Steroid injections for women in preterm labour to reduce deaths due to premature babies’ breathing problems, resuscitation devices to save babies who do not breathe at birth, chlorhexidine umbilical cord cleansing to prevent infections and injectable antibiotics to treat newborn sepsis and pneumonia have been recommended in the report.

“These are global experiences that have never been campaigned in Bangladesh until recently,” said Save the Children Bangladesh’s Saving Newborn Lives project director Sayed Rubayet.

He said “even donors came forward only recently, but there were some implementation challenges still prevailing”.

For instance, Rubayet told bdnews24.com, to prevent premature deaths Kangaroo mother care, where the newborn is placed skin-to-skin with its mother to stabilise premature babies, and administrating steroid injections to mothers delivering before their terms are recommended.

“The injection is very cheap, only half a dollar but it’s not on the government’s agenda,” he said.

He said Kangaroo mother care, if launched at health facilities in Bangladesh, would not be able to cover many as less than 25 percent women gave birth at those facilities.

“It needs counseling that our nurses are not used to. We have also shortages of nurses. So they don’t have even time to spend to counsel a mother.”

Rubayet said many babies were being referred from primary level hospitals to others “only due to lack of standard guidelines to manage infections”.

“We should have a guideline for the primary level hospitals. Delay in starting treatment aggravates their conditions and eventually they die,” he noted.

The report said: “By investing in mothers and children, nations are investing in their future prosperity. If women are educated, are represented politically, and have access to good quality maternal and child care, then they and their children are much more likely to survive and thrive – and so are the societies they live in.”

The report documented sharp decline in maternal deaths in Bangladesh and said women participation in Parliament was almost equal to the global average of 20 percent.

But $780 gross national income was far below the global average $9,511.

The 8.1 expected years of schooling is also below the global average, 11 years.