A recent article in a medical journal criticizes developing nations for not taking action to save the youngest and most defenseless people in the world -- newborns
About 10,000 babies under a month old die every day -- four million a year -- and most could be saved with relatively simple, low-cost treatment, according to medical researchers at the start of an international campaign to cut the death toll.
Most die from infections (36 percent), premature birth (28 percent) and asphyxia (23 percent). Tetanus, virtually unseen in babies less than four weeks old in the developed world, kills a million a year.
Two-thirds of the deaths occur in ten countries -- Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia and Tanzania. The deaths are equivalent to the total number of live babies born in western Europe every year.
Nearly three million of the deaths could be prevented by 16 interventions such as tetanus vaccinations for pregnant women, the promotion of cleanliness at birth, prompt and exclusive breastfeeding, extra care for low-weight babies and antibiotics for babies who pick up infections.
Many of the low birthweight babies could be saved if they were kept warm and fed from birth, but more than half of women in Africa and south Asia do not have a midwife or other skilled birth attendant to avoid complications and give advice when they deliver.
A series of articles in the Lancet medical journal, which is leading the campaign, calls for the world to act to save children and their mothers who are also at risk in the poorest developing countries.
The cost of obtaining 90 percent coverage for the 16 basic interventions would be around US$4bn, the Lancet papers say -- or about US$1 for every woman and baby at risk.
"It is now time for governments and assistance agencies to take joint responsibility to reduce the needless deaths of women and children," say Anne Tinker and colleagues from Save the Children-USA in a commentary on the research.
The Lancet editor, Richard Horton, says newborn babies have been relatively neglected in the initiatives to improve the health of developing world children. "If we continue to fail children under threat, we will be delivering a verdict of wanton inhumanity against ourselves," he said. "We will be a knowing party to an entirely preventable mass destruction of human life.
"The weapon that will be wielded in this crime will not be a bomb, a biological agent or an aeroplane. It will be something more sinister -- withdrawal from the universe of human reason and compassion into a national solipsism that degrades the values that we claim to revere."
Horton says governments in rich countries have failed newborn babies because they value them less than adults.
He criticizes British politicians whose drive to help the developing world did not extend to the youngest.
"Politicians such as Tony Blair and [UK Chancellor of the Exchequer] Gordon Brown speak proudly of their commitment to making poverty history, and they are happy to be photographed with Bob Geldof and Bono, but when it comes to children and especially the newborn, it's foundations and charities that have to step in to provide life-saving support to fill the vacuum left by governments."
One of the papers in the series of four published on Friday on the Lancet Web site says a shortage of skilled staff is the biggest obstacle to scaling up care for newborns.
The lead author of that paper, Rudolf Knippenberg of UNICEF, says: "To save the lives of newborn children and mothers, our analysis suggests the need to double or even quadruple the health budget of many of the world's poorest countries -- while increasing accountability for the use of those resources."
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