Midwives can save newborns: UNFPA Bangladesh chief

The new Bangladesh chief of the UNFPA says a trained midwife can provide the essential maternal and newborn care.

Citing medical journal The Lancet, Dr Asa Torkelsson said they can actually provide 87 percent of the essential care in and around the delivery.

Speaking at a roundtable organised by bdnews24.com, the UNFPA representative identified some “triggers and drivers” of the vulnerability of would-be-mothers in Bangladesh. Those include early marriage and deliveries outside the health system.

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

Torkelsson also stressed investments in the midwifery service which is new to Bangladesh.

The government launched midwifery as a separate profession with the help of UNFPA in 2010 when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina made this commitment at the UN General Assembly. Currently, there are 34 midwifery training centres in Bangladesh.

bdnews24.com Editor-in-Chief Toufique Imrose Khalidi, while moderating the roundtable, asked Torkelsson whether those were enough for Bangladesh.

The UNFPA chief said their target is to accelerate the progress of creating midwives and bring down the maternal death rate which is, she said, currently 170 per 100,000 live births.

 

When Khalidi mentioned that a lot depends on awareness of mothers, she said: “Definitely we have to build awareness and sensitise [families].”

The absolute number of newborn deaths has declined from 241,000 in 1990 to 62,000 in 2016. But still 170 newborns die every day before completing their first month of life.

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

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).

Global studies say universal access to products that cost between $0.13 and $6 each could save those babies.

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 are recommended.

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.

Unicef is a major partner in maternal and neonatal health efforts in Bangladesh and is supporting the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in implementing major initiatives in maternal, neonatal and child health.

It launched the Every Child Alive campaign in February to secure political commitments from the leaders before the general elections due in December.

Health Minister Mohammed Nasim, speaking at the roundtable, made a commitment that his party, Awami League, would make it an election pledge to bring down the child mortality to zero.

Director General for Health Prof Abul Kalam Azad, Director General for Family Planning Kazi Mustafa Sarwar, Save the Children’s Deputy Country Director Dr Ishtiaq Mannan, Unicef Bangladesh’s Deputy Representative Sheema Sengupta, Chief of the health section Maya Vandenet and Health Manager Md Ziaul Matin were the other speakers of the roundtable, first after Unicef launched its campaign.