Chapters authored
Reducing Early Neonatal Mortality in Nigeria—The Solution
The West African nation of Nigeria seems to have run out of ideas on how their neonatal mortality rate may be lowered. This situation has become dare as the country could not make any significant progress even with the great supports of the last 10 years of Millennium Development Goal. Presently, one in every two deceased child under 5 years of age in Nigeria is a neonate. Literature reveals that most of these deceased neonates are classified preterm or low birthweight, of which nearly four in five must die within first 7 days. This clearly identified the categories and stages of highest mortality; however, it is disappointing that the authorities of the Nigerian health care system have for too long been unable to devise a solution for the neonates. Probably, inadequacy of climatic and cultural compatibilities might partly be responsible for the failure of their current conventional ideas and technologies—these being predominantly imported. Yet, there seems to be lack of interest in some home-grown unconventional ideas that have achieved the needed reduction at few centers. In this chapter, we present the unconventional approaches and encourage across-the-nation translation of the applications to achieve accelerated end to this situation.
Part of the book: Selected Topics in Neonatal Care
Fundamentals of a safe and effective neonatal building design in a tropical LMIC setting
A safe and effective neonatal building is an aspect of Neonatal Rescue Scheme (NRS) concept as described in the literature. Observable habitual practices leading to various neonatal outcomes at tropical LMIC settings point to adverse facility-based mortality contributions from poor nursery layouts. Sadly, the negative impacts of building deficiencies are not well-understood or empirically quantified as tailored to the limitations in resource-constrained tropical climate. Lack of helpful building features may exacerbate high morbidity owing to adverse issues such as poor infection control, evening fever syndrome (EFS), noise pollution, medication safety, intra-ward traffic, nursing fatigue, and parental services. A tropical LMIC setting has the disadvantages of relative poverty, infrastructural inadequacies, and adverse equatorial climatic conditions, necessitating design-specific requirements for safe neonatal care. This chapter is proposed to explore the constraints, concepts, and features as integrated in some NRS nurseries at different tropical regions of Nigeria, which function to mitigate the climate, poor infrastructure, and societal poverty against neonatal survival.
Part of the book: Best Practices in Neonatal Care and Safety [Working title]