WHO launches campaign to save newborns in Vietnam

The World Health Organisation (WHO) launched its ‘First Embrace’ campaign in Vietnam on July 14, highlighting basic steps that could save thousands of newborn lives and prevent hundreds of thousands of complications each year, aiming to correct unsafe and outdated practices in newborn care throughout the country.

Illustration photo. Photo: Huu Chi

The WHO said Vietnam has made great progress in the last two decades, reducing the number of newborn babies dying within the first month of life, reaching the UN Millennium Development Goal target of reducing child mortality.

However, in 2012, over 17,000 babies still died within the first month of life, according to the WHO. For this reason, First Embrace highlights early essential newborn care, or EENC. This package of actions and interventions address the most common causes of newborn fatality and disease, such as prematurity (being born too soon), low birth weight and severe infection such as pneumonia or diarrhoea.

EENC can be done without the need for complicated preparations or expensive technology. Early essential newborn care can also be applied in district and community health centres as well as in remote areas throughout Vietnam. These areas experience a disproportionately higher number of newborn fatalities.

WHO, with support from the Ministry of Health of Vietnam, launches the First Embrace campaign in Vietnam simultaneously at three hospitals this week: Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, the Obstetrics and Pediatrics Hospital in Da Nang, and the National Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital in Hanoi. These three hospitals are EENC Centres of Excellence in Vietnam where First Embrace practices are already in use.

WHO supports the development of these Centres of Excellence by providing direction and training to nurses and doctors, and also by creating a conducive environment for mothers and newborns to receive early newborn care in hospitals.

WHO’s First Embrace campaign is part of a broader effort to improve access to and the quality of maternal, newborn and child health care services throughout Vietnam and WHO’s Western Pacific Region.

(Source: nhandan.org.vn)