Simple steps can save a million babies each year 2023

On Tuesday, a new study found that giving pregnant women aspirin might protect more than a million kids from being stillborn or dying as newborns in underdeveloped nations.

One-quarter of the world’s infants are preterm or underweight, according to an international team of experts.

The team urged 81 low- and middle-income nations to improve pregnancy and newborn care.

According to Lancet publications, eight proven and simple strategies might prevent more than 565,000 stillbirths in these nations.

Micronutrient, protein, energy, low-dose aspirin, progesterone, smoking education, malaria, syphilis, and urine bacteria treatments were provided.

The research indicated that more than 475,000 newborn newborns may be saved if pregnant women were given steroids and doctors did not immediately clip the umbilical chord.

Researchers anticipated $1.1 billion to implement these adjustments.

“A fraction of what other health programmes receive,” said Tampere University professor Per Ashorn, the study’s primary author.

Joy Lawn of the London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, another study author, told AFP that the researchers employed a new classification for preterm or underweight newborns.

In 1919, a Finnish doctor “a bit randomly selected” a baby’s low birthweight as 2.5 kilogrammes (5.8 pounds).

Hoped to survive delivery

Despite evidence that “those babies are not all the same,” Lawn added, this “very blunt measure” has been the standard for over a century.

She said the researchers examined 160 million live births from 2000 to 2020 to determine the frequency of “too soon and too small” births.

“Quite shockingly, we found that this is much more common once you start to think about it in a more nuanced way.”

The researchers called 35.3 million infants born globally in 2020 “small vulnerable newborns” because they were preterm or extremely little.

Lawn stressed that every country was affected, even though most babies were born in southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Another Tuesday research suggested that a simple and inexpensive treatment approach might minimize serious bleeding in postpartum mothers by 60%.

Postpartum hemorrhage kills 14 million women globally, especially in impoverished nations.

A drape, intravenous drip, uterine massage, and blood-clotting medications are used in the treatment strategy.

Co-author Arri Coomarasamy of Birmingham University in the UK stated the new strategy might “radically improve women’s chances of surviving childbirth globally”.

Pascale Allotey of the World Health Organization, which co-led the research, stated, “No woman should fear for her life when giving birth.”

The New England Journal of Medicine research included over 210,000 Kenyan, Nigerian, South African, and Tanzanian women.