Here at ONE Headquarters, it’s easy to feel removed from the individuals and communities that we advocate for around the world. That’s why it was particularly exciting to meet four visitors from Malawi who came to speak with us recently about the challenges newborns face in their country: Grace Tutiwe Ngoto and her daughter Tuntufye, nurse and midwife Hilalpi Kunkeyani and Reuben Ligowe, Program Officer for Save the Children in Malawi’s Newborn Health program.

Malawi, a nation of 12 million people, is situated on the eastern side of Africa surrounded by Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia. Their poverty statistics are hard to imagine. The per capita gross national income is about $170 and the amount of government spending on health per capita is $5!

In Malawi, 73,200 children under age five die every year. Twenty percent of these are newborns less than one month that succumb to infection, complications at birth or challenges associated with low birth rates. Impressively, Malawi has managed to reduce their under-5 mortality rate by 30% over the last five years with limited resources. Unfortunately, death rates among newborns have declined at a slower pace.

This being said, while low birth rate used to be considered a death sentence, organizations like Save the Children have had great success with interventions such as kangaroo mother care (KMC). KMC encourages mothers to maintain “skin-to-skin” contact with their low-weight newborns, much like a kangaroo mother keeps her baby in her pouch. This way, any change in the baby’s body temperature is immediately corrected by the mother’s warmth and the baby is exclusively breastfed.

Grace and Tuntufye are proof that kangaroo mother care works. Tuntufye was born two months premature weighing only 2.2 pounds. Grace entered a Save the Children program at Bwaila Hospital in Lilongwe when Tuntufye dropped to 1.8 pounds. By keeping her daughter warm and feeding her every hour, Grace helped Tuntufye grow to 2.4 pounds within in a month. Grace continued using the program at home and is now a Health Surveillance Assistant with the Ministry of Health where she shares her story with pregnant women in the community, educating them about the benefits of kangaroo mother care. Hilalpi explained how helpful this education is because, as a midwife, she sees firsthand how many women lack sufficient information or don’t believe kangaroo mother care can work.

Mothers and newborns still have several challenges to overcome, including lack of access to healthcare facilities and a dire shortage of midwives. As Reuben explained to us, the Malawi government is designing a comprehensive road map to decrease the rate of maternal and child deaths through a sector wide approach towards achieving the MDGs. USAID has already committed some funding to help implement the road map, and Mozambique and Zambia are watching Malawi’s progress as a learning opportunity for their mothers.

For the sake of mothers like Grace and babies like Tuntufye, we should encourage our leaders to provide additional funding and an integrated strategy for child and maternal health, through pieces of legislation such as the Global Child Survival Act. Check out the bill’s status and to see if your representative is a co-sponsor.

-Margaret McDonnell, ONE

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 10:44 am and is filed under Malawi, Global Child Survival Act. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.