Caring like a kangaroo: India can cut neonatal death toll, world's highest
Caring like a kangaroo: India can cut neonatal death toll, world's highest
- If more Indian mothers can be persuaded to care for their babies like kangaroo mothers do, many of the 750,000 babies younger than four weeks who die every year–the world’s highest such death toll–can be saved. Kangaroo mothers keep babies in regular skin contact, an easy, low-cost intervention that can save lives in India, Somashekhar Nimbalkar, 45, a coordinator of the Advanced Neonatal Resuscitation Program of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics, told IndiaSpend in an email interview. Although the rate of neonatal mortality has declined from 52 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 28 in 2013, the rate of decline has been slower than that of infant and under-five mortality. But lasting change, said Nimbalkar–currently head of the pediatrics department at the Pramukhswami Medical College in Karamsad, Gujarat–can only come from transforming public-health institutions. A neonatal pediatrician, from Bangalore’s St John’s Medical College, Nimbalkar also has a degree in public health from the University of Nebraska and Asian Institute of Public Health, Orissa.
- If more Indian mothers can be persuaded to care for their babies like kangaroo mothers do, many of the 750,000 babies younger than four weeks who die every year–the world’s highest such death toll–can be saved. Kangaroo mothers keep babies in regular skin contact, an easy, low-cost intervention that can save lives in India, Somashekhar Nimbalkar, 45, a coordinator of the Advanced Neonatal Resuscitation Program of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics, told IndiaSpend in an email interview. Although the rate of neonatal mortality has declined from 52 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 28 in 2013, the rate of decline has been slower than that of infant and under-five mortality. But lasting change, said Nimbalkar–currently head of the pediatrics department at the Pramukhswami Medical College in Karamsad, Gujarat–can only come from transforming public-health institutions. A neonatal pediatrician, from Bangalore’s St John’s Medical College, Nimbalkar also has a degree in public health from the University of Nebraska and Asian Institute of Public Health, Orissa.