Webdesk: New study suggests that simple, low-cost health care for pregnant women in developing countries could save more than a million babies from being stillborn or dying as newborns each year.
A group of researchers found that a quarter of the world’s babies are either born early or underweight. There hasn’t been much progress in this area.
In reaction, the researchers have asked governments and organisations in 81 low-income and middle-income countries to improve the care women and babies get during pregnancy and birth.
Researchers have found eight proven, easy-to-use steps that could stop more than 565,000 stillbirths in these countries. These steps include giving micronutrient, protein, and energy supplements. As well as low-dose aspirin, the hormone progesterone, information about the dangers of smoking, and treatments for malaria, syphilis, and bacteria in urine.
The study says that giving steroids to pregnant women and not cutting the umbilical cord right away could also save the lives of more than 475,000 newborns. The expected cost of making these changes is $1.1 billion. Which researchers say a small amount compared to what other health programmes get.
Per Ashorn, a professor at Finland’s Tampere University and one of the study’s main authors, says that these changes are “a fraction of what other health programmes get.” The researchers didn’t use the usual standard set by a Finnish doctor in 1919. Instead, they used a new definition for babies born early or with low birth weight.
One in 4 babies
Joy Lawn says that the researchers looked at a record of 160 million live births from 2000 to 2020. One in four of these babies, or 35,3 million, were either born too early or were too small. These babies now called “small vulnerable newborns.”
Even though most of the kids were born in southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the disease affects every country.
Lawn says that one reason is that these problems tend to affect families. As well as women who don’t have as much of a voice. For example, pregnant African-American women in the U.S. get less care than other groups.
The researchers have stressed how important it is for governments and organisations to make these cost-effective steps a priority and put them into place to improve the health of mothers and babies.
