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Maternal, Newborn and Reproductive Health
Each year, nearly 3 million children die within the first 28 days of life, nearly one third of these deaths occur on the first day of life. An additional 2.6 million babies are stillborn. A further 290,000 women die each year of complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. The vast majority of these deaths can be prevented through the delivery of a small set of low-cost, proven interventions. Unfortunately, these lifesaving interventions are not reaching those most in need.
Save the Children's MNRH work aims to increase access to three lifesaving service packages: (a) family planning and reproductive health, (b) antenatal care, and (c) labour, delivery and newborn care.
Family Planning: Save the Children’s family planning and reproductive health work focuses on the expansion of contraceptive services, the promotion of healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies, and the expansion of youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services.
Antenatal Care: Save the Children’s antenatal care work focusses on expanding access to the World Health Organization’s focused antenatal care package, including the delivery of the tetanus toxoid vaccine, iron/folic acid supplementation, the prevention and treatment of malaria during pregnancy, and the prevention and treatment of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.
Labour, Delivery and Newborn care: Save the Children labor and delivery work focusses on ensuring skilled care at birth, basic newborn care, neonatal resuscitation, treatment of severe newborn infections, supportive care for sick and small newborns, and the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
The organization works with governments, civil society and communities to expand access to these services, and to promote the adoption of healthy maternal, reproductive and newborn care practices.
Photo: Colin Crowley/Save the Children
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Saving Newborn Lives: Champions toolkit (Second Edition)
Save the Children’s Saving Newborn Lives (SNL) program has a long and successful history of collaborating with newborn health champions to advocate for robust policies and programs to reduce global neonatal mortality. SNL and pediatricians, midwives, memb
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Pragati: Fertility awareness for quality of life
Project brief summarizing the Pragati "Fertility Awareness for Quality of Life" intervention under USAID's Fertility Awareness for Community Transformation project, implemented by Save the Children and Georgetown University Institute for Reproductive Heal
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Twelve-month Contraceptive Continuation Among Women Initiating Short- and Long-acting Reversible Contraceptives in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo
An evaluation of a contraceptive services program in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was conducted to measure 12-month contraceptive continuation by type of contraceptive method (short-acting or long-acting). This is the first study of
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Chlorhexidine and Newborn Omphalitis and Mortality
This Lancet correspondence disagrees with conclusions David Osrin & Tim Colbourn made from Cochrane reviews, which uphold the recommendation to restrict the use of chlorhexidine to “infants born at home in environments with high neonatal mortality rates.”
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Save the Children Malawi Supports Ministry of Health in Ending Preventable Newborn Deaths: Brief
This brief highlights a district-led quality improvement and mentorship approach to improve the quality of newborn care in Malawi, and ultimately, to end preventable newborn deaths, undertaken by the Malawi Ministry of Health, with support from implementi
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Effect on Neonatal Mortality of Newborn Infection Management at Health Posts when Referral is not Possible: A cluster-randomized trial in rural Ethiopia
This journal article is a study that evaluated newborn infection treatment at the post-peripheral level of the health system in Ethiopia. It looks specifically at the role that Health Extension Workers (HEWs) play in providing antibiotic treatment of poss
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Cost of the Diet: A method and software to calculate the lowest cost of meeting recommended intakes of energy and nutrients from local foods
When food is available, the main obstacle to access is usually economic: people may not be able to afford a nutritious diet, even if they know what foods to eat. The Cost of the Diet method and software was developed to apply linear programming to better
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A New Look at Care in Pregnancy: Simple, Effective Interventions for Neglected Populations
This report seeks to fill a research gap observed on the potential impact of antenatal care (ANC). Since the work done by WHO almost 15 years ago, there has been relatively little attention in the maternal-newborn health community to the content and poten
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Saving Newborn Lives: Champions toolkit (First Edition)
Save the Children’s Saving Newborn Lives (SNL) program has a long and successful history of collaborating with newborn health champions to advocate for robust policies and programs to reduce global neonatal mortality. SNL and pediatricians, midwives, memb
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Feasibility of Community-level Interventions for Pre-eclampsia: perspectives, knowledge and task-sharing from Nigeria, Mozambique, Pakistan and India
Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP), particularly pre-eclampsia and eclampsia, remain one of the leading causes of maternal mortality and are contributory in many fetal/newborn deaths. This editorial discusses a supplement of seven papers which prov
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Newborn Health in Emergencies Summary Sheet
This summary sheet of newborn health in emergencies will tell you: What you need to know When do you need to worry How do you plan a prevention and/or response program What data should you be collecting How do you work with the community And a selection o
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Ending Newborn Deaths: Ensuring every baby survives
This report shows that, in 2012, 2.9 million babies died within 28 days of being born: two out of every five child deaths. Of these, 1 million babies died within 24 hours. Causes of these deaths include premature birth, complications during birth and infe