Reducing Early Neonatal Mortality in Nigeria—The Solution

Abstract

The West African nation of Nigeria seems to have run out of ideas on how their neona-tal 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 neo-nates 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 uncon-ventional approaches and encourage across-the-nation translation of the applications to achieve accelerated end to this situation.