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Gambia News : State Secretary's Misgivings with MDG Moves

The Secretary of State for Health, Dr. Malick Njie, has said that the MDG, or Millennium Development Goal on child mortality reduction will not be attained unless systematic policy and pragmatic attention is given to improving newborn health. He made this remark on Wednesday October 29th when he officially opened a ten-day sub-regional Anglophone training-of-trainers workshop on community care of the new-born. The workshop that is organized by the West African Health Organization (WAHO) in collaboration with the WHO sub-regional office, based in Burkina Faso, is being held at the Kairaba Beach Hotel in Senegambia tourist resort, not far from Banjul.

According to Dr. Njie, who spent some time under Jammeh-detention, each year in Africa, at least 1.12 million babies die in the first month of their life, usually in the first week of life. He went on to say that out of this figure two-third of these deaths during the first 24 hours of life, accounting for over one quarter of under-five mortality in the region. The workshop brings together participants from Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra-Leone, Liberia and The Gambia and aims at training trainers for community home based care of the newborn within the context of improving the quality and access to maternal, newborn and child health services, towards the attainment of the MDGs four and five.

Dr. Njie said that between 40% and 50% of newborn deaths occur in the first day of life, while 75% of the deaths take place in the first week of life.

“This, unfortunately, is the very period during which coverage of care is at its lowest.” He went on to say that this is despite the fact that global understanding of the issues related to newborn mortality and the best interventions to reduce it has increased tremendously in recent years. Child survival series 2003, the vision 2010 initiatives of first ladies in West and Central Africa of year 2001, the African Union Road Map 2004, the World Health Report 2005, and the Neonatal Survival Series 2005, published by the Lancet, have raised hopes about the possibility of a second child survival revolution. This, he added can be brought about through medical interventions that are necessary for promoting child survival and health, He added that most of these interventions can be delivered through programs and strategies already established for maternal and child health in   the countries.  However, he said, regional coverage is low; inequality is rife and progress in scaling up the interventions extremely slow.

Src: Gambia Journal, The