Newborn health interventions in humanitarian settings
Citation: Rodo M, Duclos D, DeJong J, et al. A systematic review of newborn health interventions in humanitarian settings. BMJ Global Health. 2022;7(7):e009082.
Language: Abstract and full text available in EN.
Free to view: Yes.
Funding sources: UK Research and Innovation (part of the Global Challenges Research Fund).
What is this? Newborn babies are especially vulnerable to health problems in humanitarian settings.
In this systematic review, the authors searched for studies of interventions for improving health outcomes of newborns (0-28 days after birth) in acute or protracted humanitarian emergencies in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). They restricted their searches to articles published in English, Portuguese, Spanish and French, between 1 January 1990 and 15 November 2021. They included 35 articles, which reported 1 cluster randomised trial, 17 cross-sectional studies, 2 cohort studies, 5 pre-post studies, 3 controlled pre-post studies, 2 case studies and 5 qualitative studies.
What was found: The most common types of essential newborn care reported were thermal care and feeding support.
Strategies such as training healthcare workers, community-based interventions and providing financial incentives and specialized equipment had been implemented to increase the use of newborn care, but without an evaluation of their impact on health outcomes in newborns.
Implications: The authors of this review concluded that, apart from the training of healthcare workers, community health interventions and understanding the social beliefs around newborn care seem to be key activities for the success of newborn care programmes. However, they stated that despite an increasing availability of guidance and advocacy on improving newborn health in humanitarian settings, there is still insufficient quantity and quality of studies documenting these interventions and evaluating their effectiveness and they called for more such studies.
Other considerations: The authors of the review discussed their findings in the context of place of residence (LMICs).
This summary was prepared by Joly Ghanawi, checked by Grace Meng, and finalized by Mike Clarke.