In this week's PLoS Medicine, Abdullah Baqui from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA and colleagues systematically review studies describing newborn care-seeking behaviours by caregivers in low- and middle-income countries. The study's findings highlight the lack of a standardized and consistent approach to neonate care-seeking behaviours described in the literature. Despite the large variations in results, care seeking for newborn illnesses in LMICs appears to be low in general and remains a key challenge to improving neonatal mortality.
The authors state: "To bring about sustainable improvements in neonatal survival, changes are needed to both increase the demand for newborn care and strengthen health care systems, such as improving access and quality of care and socio-economic inequality through education and literacy initiatives."
Funding: Funding was made possible from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through the University of Edinburgh. No funding bodies had any role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: ACCL is funded for research by NIH and USAID. In 2009, ACCL consulted for Saving Newborn Lives. All other authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation: Herbert HK, Lee ACC, Chandran A, Rudan I, Baqui AH (2012) Care Seeking for Neonatal Illness in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review. PLoS Med 9(3): e1001183. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001183
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CONTACT:
Abdullah Baqui
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Department of International Health
Baltimore
Maryland
United States of America
abaqui@jhsph.edu
Journal
PLoS Medicine