Community Based Newborn Care in Ethiopia: Special issue of the Ethiopian Medical Journal

The purpose of this supplement is to document the implementation of the national Community Based Newborn Care (CBNC) intervention in Ethiopia in order to identify implementation strengths and weaknesses, as well as to generate knowledge for future national and international public health interventions. These papers were written to provide the first comprehensive view of Ethiopia’s newborn care efforts and lessons learned to date. The first four papers in this supplement including the Forward by the Minister of Health (18), Bekele and coauthor’s editorial describing current newborn health policy and guidelines (19), Taylor and co-author’s description of the Four Cs of PSBI (20), and Pearson and co-author’s application of the Lives Saved Tool to CBNC (21), lay out the framing of this program in the context of the Ethiopian Ministry of Health’s conceptual approach and priorities. The middle section, consisting of six papers, describes components and systems that played important roles in this effort. These papers review facility readiness (22), supportive supervision (23), supply and logistics (24), service delivery performance (25), referral (26), and utilization and care-seeking (27). The penultimate set of four papers goes into detail on some of the efforts carried out for specific interventions including newborn corners (28), chlorhexidine for cord care (29), postnatal care, and identification of PSBI (30) or for the specific location of Afar(31). The final paper discusses key aspects of sustainability for ongoing and expanded efforts (32). Together, these papers provide the first holistic account of a vitally important step in Ethiopia’s march toward better health for all its children.