In 2000, the world made a promise [Millennium Development Goal 4] to achieve by 2015 two-thirds reduction in deaths among children aged under five, compared to the figures of 1990.
With less than 500 days left to reach the MDG deadline, great progress has been made, but the world still risks breaking one of the most profound promises ever made to children.
New figures published last month in the UNICEF’s “Committing to Child Survival: A Promise Renewed” report show that the world continues to make progress in preventing deaths among children. Since 1990, under-five mortality has halved and by 2013 the number of under-five child deaths had fallen to 6.3 million, compared to 12.7 million in 1990. The global rate of under-five mortality is declining faster today than at any time over the past two decades, and more children are living to celebrate their fifth birthday. This is good news!
But, despite this progress, 17,000 children under five still die every day. This equates to one under-five life ending every five seconds – around the length of time it took you to read this sentence. And while under-five mortality is falling overall, the most vulnerable children — the newborn babies (aged under 28 days)—are being left behind.
In 2013, almost one million children died the world over on the day they were born, their first and only day of life. More than four out of 10 under-five deaths occurred during the neonatal period - the first 28 days of life. In 1990, just a little under four out of 10 under-five deaths were neonatal deaths. What these figures translate is that no significant progress has been recorded in reducing neonatal mortality globally.
The reader may or may not already know that in Ghana a newborn baby dies every 15 minutes and about 30,000 die annually. Ghana, like many other developing countries, has witnessed a stagnation in the reduction of newborn deaths. At the current pace, the country will not meet the Millennium Development Goal 4 target - under-five mortality of 41 deaths per 1,000 live births by the year 2015.
Action
The good news is that 75 per cent of all these newborn deaths can be easily prevented or treated with simple and low-cost interventions that are all at our reach. We have the evidence of the effectiveness of these interventions which, if correctly applied and in a timely manner, can effectively prevent at least 75 per cent of the deaths of our precious newborn babies.
All that we need to do is to act, now to avert any more deaths of our newborn babies; now because we cannot wait till tomorrow. We can effectively save the lives of 24,000 newborn babies who are dying in Ghana each year.
What we need is skilled human resources - I mean skilled health care providers, equitably distributed throughout the country, who provide quality care to mothers during pregnancy, to mothers and their newborns during childbirth, and continued quality care to the newborns during their first month of life.
We need skilled healthcare workers to visit each newborn at home at least twice during the first week of life (the most critical period) to make sure that our babies are doing well and immediately take necessary action if any signs of distress are noticed.
We also need to provide the health facilities with all the necessary equipment and commodities for the care of all newborns requiring medical attention.
Last but not least, we need to work with our communities to break with all the negative (and usually wrong) beliefs and harmful practices that are detrimental to the health and survival of the newborn. We have to implement all these interventions quickly and to scale, to be able to reverse this sad trend of newborn mortality.
But interventions alone are not enough - Government commitment is the key that can unlock the door to child survival. This has repeatedly been demonstrated at the highest level by the Ministry of Health.
Alongside government, everyone has a role to play - the business community, traditional and religious leaders, mothers, fathers and caregivers, — to make real the dream for a Ghana where no newborn baby dies.
Victor Ngongalah is the Chief of Health and Nutrition Programme at UNICEF Ghana.
