ngrguardiannews.com – THE need for governments globally to ensure that mothers and babies, especially those in the rural communities, get the quality healthcare they need to survive, has become a source of concern to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

 

Also, the need for governments to provide the relevant tools that would facilitate the gathering of the accurate statistics of newborns, the UNICEF believed, would go a long way to accelerate the growth of such countries.

 

This was  disclosed Wednesday by leadership of the organisation through its Head of Global Health Programmes, Dr. Mickey Chopra and Dr. Kim Eva Dickson, UNICEF’s Senior Adviser on Maternal and Neonatal Health, in a statement made available to journalists by the Communications Officer of the D-Field Office of the organisation, Samuel Kaalu.

The Guardian gathered that the decision was arrived at after the conclusion of a global forum, held last Tuesday in Johannesburg, South Africa and which focused on preventing maternal, child and newborn deaths.

They agreed that commitments made by governments, public and private sector organisations, have the much-needed potentials to transform the “outlook of newborn babies, millions of whom die each year.” 

Stressing that “The Every Newborn Action Plan launched at the Johannesburg forum by former South Africa First Lady and women and children’s advocate, Graça Machel, aims to address this glaring lapse in the global child survival agenda.” Dickson beckoned on all the world leaders to embrace the action plan.

According to him, “Countries must take the lead in making sure these proven, simple steps to help newborn survival are implemented at the local level,” stating that “This would ensure that all mothers and babies, even those in the hardest to reach communities, can get the quality care they need to help them survive.”

Making available UNICEF figures, which show that “2.9 million babies die in the first month of life”, he said that of these, 1 million do not survive the first day, making the first 24 hours of a child’s life the most dangerous. As deaths of children under five have decreased globally, from approximately 12 million in 1990 to 6.6 million in 2012, newborn deaths have stagnated and now make up a larger percentage of child deaths than they did in 1990, going from 33 per cent to 44 per cent.” Chopra is optimistic that a lot can still be put in place to save newborns from timely deaths.

According to Chopra: “I am very optimistic that progress can be made, because it has been done by some countries,” adding that “Over the past decade, Rwanda, for example, has had the fastest rate of reduction of child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. If we used the same methods globally, by 2035, a child born in Cameroun would have about the same chance of surviving as a child born in the United States of America.”

“As we mark the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention of the Rights of the Child this year, we still have much to do to ensure that even the smallest child has that most basic right, to survive,” said Dr. Chopra. 

“We hope this is just the start of an unstoppable momentum towards ending preventable newborn deaths within a generation.

“Essential to action is ensuring that children, especially the smallest, are counted by their governments. The almost three million newborns, who die, and an additional 2.6 million who are stillborn, are largely absent from their countries’ statistics. Neither their births nor their deaths are registered, and so, there is little accountability for their lives, and little attention paid to why they are dying.” 

The Every Newborn Action Plan, according to the statement, “was developed by UNICEF and the World Health Organisation and provides a clear roadmap on how to end preventable newborn deaths. It promotes innovative ways to strengthen health sector strategies and outlines standards for quality care and measurement of births and deaths. It also includes programmes to reach those most neglected with universally available healthcare and sets guidelines for accountability.”

It reads in part: “UNICEF says the measures being promoted in the Every Newborn Action Plan can prevent over 70 per cent of deaths happening now.    The key is to get the political commitment and this is what the launch and the Forum seeks to generate.”

Commitments were said to have been made by governments, civil society organisations and the private sector, to support newborn programmes in the last few weeks. 

Among the commitments made as noted by the statement “include pledges of support to newborn health worth almost half a billion dollars from the USA, Canada, the Islamic Development Bank, Johnson & Johnson, GSMA, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among others.”

Sumber: http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/news/national-news/169078

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