Pushing Newborn Deaths and Stillbirths Up Global Health Agenda

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON , May 20 2014 (IPS) - Delegates to this week’s annual meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva should agree on an ambitious agenda to sharply cut the rate of newborn deaths and stillbirths over the next two decades, according to maternal and infant health experts.

Reducing the rates of newborn deaths and stillbirths has lagged significantly behind the remarkable progress achieved in cutting mortality among children between the ages of one month and five years, according to a new study in the “Every Newborn” Series published by the British medical publication, ‘The Lancet”.

Thanks in major part to the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), reductions in mortality for children 1-59 months and maternal mortality have averaged 3.4 percent and 2.6 percent annually, respectively, in recent years. By contrast, the neo-natal mortality and stillbirth rates fell by only two percent and around one percent per year, respectively.

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