Nepal’s front line health workers—the female community health volunteers (FCHVs)—have helped the country make tremendous progress toward Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 to reduce child deaths by two-thirds by 2015, by delivering interventions like pneumonia and diarrhea treatment, vitamin A supplements, family planning counseling, and childhood immunizations to rural families. Now, the health workers are helping to address the final hurdle in Nepal’s road to MDG 4: the country’s 22,000 annual—and mostly preventable—newborn deaths.

Like many countries, Nepal has steadily reduced deaths of children under five in the last decade, while its neonatal mortality rate (deaths of children in the first month of life) has stagnated. A staggering 61 percent of children who die in Nepal are newborns—and this proportion is on the rise.

Saving newborn lives does not require highly specialized staff or equipment. The necessary health interventions are basic:

• During pregnancy, women need tetanus immunizations, iron folate supplements, and birth preparedness counseling.

 

• During childbirth, a skilled birth attendant can enable a clean and safe delivery and, if needed, neonatal resuscitation.

 

• Postnatal care should include hygiene and warmth, infection prevention and management, skin-to-skin care for low birthweight and preterm babies, and early and exclusive breastfeeding.

Under the leadership of Nepal’s Ministry of Health and Population, Save the Children’s Saving Newborn Lives program is collaborating with other partners in Nepal to implement a Community-Based Newborn Care Program (CBNCP) to bring newborn health services to families in remote and rural areas. Female community health volunteers form the backbone of the program, making home visits to promote healthy practices and refer newborns and mothers with complications for treatment at the local health post.

Preliminary findings show that the program is working: More births are taking place in facilities, and more families are practicing essential newborn care and seeking treatment for complications. The CBNCP will expand to 15 districts in Nepal by 2011.

Nepal’s frontline strategy is an encouraging model for other countries in the global movement to reduce the world’s 3.6 million annual newborn deaths. You can join this movement—and network with CBNCP—by becoming a member of the Healthy Newborn Network (HNN), an online community of 45 partner organizations and more than 400 individuals working to improve maternal and newborn health.

Working together, we can help ensure that mothers and their newborns receive the proven interventions that we know can save lives—and keep Nepal on track to achieve Millennium Development Goal 4.

For more information on female community health volunteers in Nepal, watch the video below.