About $5 per person a year could avert the crisis of millions of child and maternal deaths in poor nations, according to a new report.
According to John Hopkins researchers, 4 million lives could be saved each year by targeting 90 percent of target groups with maternal and child health services, including pregnancy care, improved childhood nutrition, and treatment of malaria and other life-threatening infections. The improved healthcare services could prevent 1.5 million infant deaths, nearly 1,500 maternal deaths, and almost 850,000 stillbirths every year.
These basic services, researchers added, should be expanded in the 74 poor countries that take up a massive 95 percent of annual maternal and child death toll worldwide.
While death rates for children under age 5 were slashed in half during the last 25 years, about 6 million newborns and children died in 2015 alone, along with 2.6 million stillborns and 300,000 pregnant women.
"Many of these deaths could be prevented if high-impact and affordable solutions reached the populations that needed them most," says lead researcher and international health professor Dr. Robert Black.
The team, for instance, estimated that over 1.5 million lives could be saved annually by preventing 28 million unwanted births.
In the study, the researchers analyzed three important health care packages: maternal and newborn health, child health, and reproductive health. It appeared that services from these packages with the most significant impact included managing malnutrition, promoting pre-term birth care, providing contraception, managing labor and delivery, and treating serious infections.
These three health care packages, they explained, could be quickly scaled up to almost all people in need through investing $6.2 billion in low-income nations, $12.4 billion in lower middle-income nations, and $8 billion in upper-middle income ones. This translates to just $4.7 average overall investment per person.
Community workers and primary health facilities can deliver most of these services and therefore reduce the cost of expanded coverage, adds Black, pinpointing additional benefits such as enhanced cognitive development in children due to better nutrition.
Arijit Nandi, a professor at McGill University in Canada, lauded the findings’ potential yet mentioned barriers to implementing them, including the lack of resources and facilities for immunization.
“[T]here’s persistent gender discrimination that can prevent women from availing themselves of family planning,” he warns, emphasizing the inadequate control over healthcare decisions and the possibility of being unable to travel outside the home and access the services.
Black says the report, which was published by the World Bank, will hopefully influence grant support as well as UN agencies and their partners. The provided costs are expected to slightly increase by 2035 when the population increases.
The findings were published on April 9 in the journal The Lancet and presented at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health conference held in San Francisco.
Photo: CDC Global | Flickr
