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300,000 Newborns Die in Pakistan Every Year

Pakistani Doctors Help Produce Checklist to Save Newborn Lives

In Pakistan, 5.5 million babies are born every year, out of whom, 300,000 die before completing their first month of life. Worldwide, the number of newborn deaths amounts to four million annually, 75 per cent occurring in the first week after birth.

Medical experts have reported in the British weekly journal The Lancet, that a simple checklist of seven signs can help parents and frontline health workers make quick decisions about which infants need urgent medical attention. If this checklist was extensively used, it could significantly reduce infant deaths.

This study with the potential to save millions of babies from dying without receiving medical attention was conducted in six countries including Pakistan where researchers from Aga Khan University (AKU) contributed data. Dr Anita Zaidi from the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, AKU led the community-based arm of this large study, recruiting more than half of the 3,177 sick infants under seven days old that were included in the analysis. The results of the study will be used to make guidelines for teaching parents and health workers in poor countries about when to seek care for sick babies.

The seven symptoms found to be most useful for predicting serious illness in babies are: difficulty in feeding; movement only when stimulated; temperature below 95.9F; temperature above 99.5F; breathing (respiratory) rate of more than 60 breaths per minute; severe chest indrawing and a history of convulsions.

Early detection of severe illnesses will provide a huge benefit as severe illnesses tend to kill newborns very quickly. Using the checklist, health workers and parents can quickly decide whether a baby needs to be urgently seen by a doctor or not. The work has received widespread international media attention.

The UN Millennium Development Goal is to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by the year 2015 as compared to 1990 levels.

For further information, please contact:

Rasool Sarang, Assistant Manager Media, at 486-3920 or rasool.sarang@aku.edu;
Naveed Rahman, Senior Media Executive, at 486-2931 or naveed.rahman@aku.edu;
Hassaan Akhter, Media Executive, at 486-2927 or hassaan.akhter@aku.edu

Department of Public Affairs
Aga Khan University
Stadium Road, P.O. Box 3500, Karachi-74000
Fax: 92 21 493 4294, 4932095

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