The Components of Essential Newborn Care - basics

The Components of EssentialNewborn CareIndira Narayanan, Mandy Rose, Dilberth Cordero,Silvana Faillace, and Tina SanghviCare provided during the perinatal andneonatal periods (Figure 1) is critical toensuring the health of mother and baby.Maternal health and newborn health areinextricably linked; this brief primarily addressesthe needs of the newborn infant and some selectedmaternal issues that influence birth outcome.Essential newborn care (ENC) is acomprehensive strategy designed to improve thehealth of newborns through interventions beforeconception, during pregnancy, at and soon afterbirth, and in the postnatal period.These issues need to be addressed in anappropriate manner at the facility and communitylevels to ensure a continuum of care.ComponentsThe components of ENC are summarized inFigure 2 and described in greater detail in Table 1.Depending on their mandates, private voluntaryand other organizations may facilitate or provideENC services or simply promote them throughcommunication and social mobilization strategies.Essential Newborn CareENC comprises:(a) Basic preventive newborn caresuch as care before and duringpregnancy, clean deliverypractices, temperaturemaintenance, eye and cord care,and early and exclusivebreastfeeding on demand dayand night;(b) Early detection of problems ordanger signs (with priority forsepsis and birth asphyxia) andappropriate referral and careseeking.This may also be a partof (a) and (c); and(c) Treatment of key problems suchas sepsis and birth asphyxia.Figure 1. Definition of the Perinatal and Neonatal PeriodsPregnancyPerinatal periodEarlyneonatalperiod22 weeks 6 completedBirthdaysLateneonatalperiodNewborn period27 completeddaysThe Components of Essential Newborn Care3