Bangladesh changed global policy on newborn care: Save the Children

The deputy country director of the Save the Children has said Bangladesh has helped the world change its policy towards newborn care.

Dr Ishtiaq Mannan termed it a “big success”, despite the fact that Bangladesh is at the bottom ten countries in terms of newborn deaths.

Because of the big population size, Bangladesh is at the bottom of the list, “but if you consider the rate of reduction it is much higher than in many other countries”.

Mannan responded to bdnews24.com’s Editor-in-Chief Toufique Imrose Khalidi at a roundtable on how to save every newborn in Bangladesh.

bdnews24.com organised the discussion in partnership with Unicef that launched a global campaign in February to keep “every child alive”.

Health Minister Mohammed Nasim who was also present at the roundtable vowed to keep newborn care in the election manifesto in an effort to bring the rate down to zero.

As top UN and government officials were painting a rosy picture of the government’s capabilities to cut newborn deaths, the moderator, Khalidi, asked Dr Mannan: “Should we be complacent?

“Definitely we will celebrate the success,” Mannan said, adding that Bangladesh has become a clear example in the world.

“India is much behind us. The rate of reduction [newborn deaths in India] is much slower than ours,” he said. “The rate of reduction is faster in Bangladesh.”

“Bangladesh is reducing the newborn mortality at a rate faster than the global average. We should take note of the success.”

“Bangladesh has done two famous researches in the last decades—randomised control trials of Projonmo and chlorhexidine. Both influenced global policy. This is a big success,” he said.

“Research evidence generated from Bangladesh changed the global policy.”

 

But he cautioned that Bangladesh is at the final hundred metre of the race as it cut down the absolute number of newborn deaths from 241,000 in 1990 to 62,000 in 2016.

Eighty-eight percent of the neonates die from preventable causes such as preterm complications (45 percent), perinatal asphyxia (23 percent) and severe infections (20 percent).

But premature births, failing to breathe at birth and infections kill the large number of newborns on the first day of birth.

For the last mile of the journey, business as usual will not work, Dr Mannan said.

The new Health Sector Programme (2017-2022), for the first time, has incorporated a national newborn health programme in the operational plans to scale up newborn care, taking evidence and lessons from existing programmes supported by development partners.