Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Stop neonatal deaths' that was published in Newsband

Stop neonatal deaths

India leads in neonatal (0-27 days of age) deaths. Of the three million neonatal deaths globally in 2012, some 779,000 were in India. According to a 2012 WHO report, India is one of the 10 countries with an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 preterm births, as in 2010. The high number of preterm births is one of the reasons for the very high numbers of newborn deaths in the country — preterm births cause about 50 per cent of neonatal mortality.

Many deliveries still take place at home at some places in India. Also, the lack of well-trained healthcare workers and well-equipped healthcare centres has proved to be a “barrier” to improving newborn survival. There is, hence, an urgent need to improve the quality of care. What must be borne in mind is that many of the initiatives taken to save neonates’ lives would also help in reducing maternal mortality. With 50,000 deaths, India has the highest maternal mortality in the world.

Every government talks about maternal and medical cure but none of them provide appropriate facilities for birth. It’s not enough to talk and make policies. There is need to work out the ideas on paper and implement them. Neonatal death is a very serious issue that India faces. We have 60% percent of India still living in villages which are far away from the basic need of maternal facilities. Government must pay some attention towards rural areas and should provide at least minimum required facility for controlling this situation.

Poverty is the vital cause for the neonatal deaths. Due to poverty pregnant women are unable to take nutritional food during pregnant period. The new government should provide nutritional food and medical care to the pregnant women.

Modi government needs to pay attention to the neo-natal death issues and develop new policies to solve the issue. Given that the lack of well-equipped healthcare centres has proved to be an obstacle to improving newborn survival there is an ominous need to increase the number of well-trained birth attendants particularly in villages. 

The NDA regime has taken a vital decision to improve drinking water availability and proper sanitation for everybody. This initiative will help bring a lot of change. Next, proper healthcare is must. In some states, there is a serious dearth of doctors. There is dearth of doctors in the hospitals and where doctors are present, they are not well trained or equipped. The only way to improve healthcare is to encourage cheap private healthcare which is being provided by some hospital chains. They need to be encouraged and equipped sufficiently.

What we need is investment by public sector in medical colleges and attached hospitals and allied medical institutions. Since these colleges will be administered by public sector companies their standard will be better than Government colleges and hospitals. This is another way to improve the healthcare in our country.