WHAT does the newborn infant need shortly after birth? It’s the first embrace. To help save more than 50,000 newborn lives, the World Health Organization (WHO) Region for the Western Pacific on Thursday launched its First Embrace campaign. The campaign, according to documents provided by the WHO, also aims of preventing hundreds of thousands of complications each year from unsafe practices in newborn care in the region.
Maria Asuncion Silvestre, pediatric neonatologist and president of Kalusugan ng Mag-Ina Foundation, said during the launch that “the first few minutes of the newborn’s life is very crucial.”
“Separation of the mother and child immediately after birth is an age-old practice. But it occurs during a crucial time, when babies are programmed to look for their mother’s breast in order to breastfeed,” Silvestre, a physician, said at WHO main office in Manila.
Silvestre, who is also a WHO consultant, added that half of all deaths of children under-5 occur within the first month of life.
For this reason, First Embrace highlights early essential newborn care (EENC), which is a package of actions and interventions that address the most common causes of newborn death or disease, such as prematurity (being born too soon), low birth weight and severe infection.
The campaign also seeks to engage the general public, health workers, policy-makers and civil society to champion EENC, the WHO documents said.
“We lose far too many newborn infants to preventable factors, such as disease” WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific Shin Young-soo explained.
“First Embrace addresses this challenge by urging women and health-care providers to take simple steps to protect babies during the crucial time immediately after birth.”
The WHO documents said the EENC is a series of simple and cost-effective measures designed to prevent newborn deaths by changing harmful medical practices. EENC can be performed in all birth settings without the need for complicated preparations or expensive technology.
The EENC begins with the first embrace or sustained skin-to-skin contact between the mother and child shortly after birth. This simple act, according to the WHO, transfers warmth, placental blood and protective bacteria and promotes exclusive breastfeeding.
Skin-to-skin contact should be followed by proper clamping and cutting of the umbilical cord with sterile instruments. Breastfeeding then initiates naturally at feeding cues, such as drooling, tonguing, rooting and biting the hand. Early initiation of breastfeeding is especially important because colostrum, or the first milk, contains essential nutrients, antibodies and immune cells.
“Colostrum acts like the baby’s first immunization,” explains Howard Sobel, WHO regional coordinator for reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health in the Western Pacific Region.
Other routine steps—such as the provision of vitamin K, eye prophylaxis, immunizations, complete examinations and weighing—should be performed after the first breastfeeding, according to Sobel.
These steps must be performed in proper sequence for maximum benefit, he added.
However, Sobel said health workers may be unaware of these relatively simple steps to protect newborns.
In addition, customs and beliefs among some communities and health-care providers may act as a barrier to full implementation of EENC. Changing practices requires a supportive environment and informed families and individuals that insist on best practices from health-care providers.