Many Newborn Deaths Preventable, Experts Say

Washington Post ^ | March 3, 2005 | Patricia Reaney (Reuters)

[baseball_fan]

LONDON -- Four million newborn babies die every year in the world but three-quarters of them could be easily saved, researchers said on Thursday.

Most of the deaths occur in 10 countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and are caused by infections, prematurity and breathing problems related to birth complications.

"If you look across 23 nations of western Europe there are 4 million births every year," said Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet medical journal.

"So the annual global neonatal mortality is equivalent to all newly born babies in western Europe being entirely wiped out," he added.

"That equals 10,000-11,000 deaths per day, 450 deaths per hour and seven neonatal deaths per minute, up to three-quarters of which are entirely unnecessary and preventable," he told a news conference.

[baseball_fan]

Dr Zulfiqar Bhutta, of Aga Khan University in Pakistan, said low-cost, low-tech interventions could be packaged together and delivered at birth and afterwards to prevent three million of the four million newborn deaths.

"This is affordable," he said. "The cost of this is estimated at $1 a person per year."

[mdittmar]

The irony is thick;

"America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign."
Mother Teresa (Wall Street Journal, 2/25/94)

[Capriole]

Interesting. We had a freeper on here just last night posting that Western medicine constituted torture for newborns and we would have happier babies if we would just adopt the wonderful pediatric practices of Third-World countries.

I am associated with an organization, the Watson Foundation, that strives to distribute very low-cost, basic drugs and nutraments to children in the most remote areas of the world--places where children aren't even within reach of some ghastly Third-World hospital. Simple first aid supplies, triple antibiotic ointment, vitamins, and antidiarrheal drugs can save the health or the lives of millions of children for only pennies. It can cost 13 cents to give a baby enough medication to stop a killing diarrhea. And the clever thing is, the foundation is avoiding the intervention of the thieves in the UN and its programs, as well as distributing only such medications as are not valuable to the local military.

[baseball_fan]

Might the Prolife movement adopt these other children as part of their mission? It would seem like a natural extension.

[LuigiBasco]

Dr Zulfiqar Bhutta, of Aga Khan University in Pakistan, said low-cost, low-tech interventions could be packaged together and delivered at birth and afterwords to prevent three million of the four million newborn deaths. "This is affordable," he said. "The cost of this is estimated at $1 a person per year."

How sickening can we get? When do we put a ridiculous price on a womans use of birth control to the extent that we turn our selves into complete ignorance to value of human life? Are we to continue to treat Abortion as a means to happy free sex no matter what the cost in our so called civil society? What next? Euthanasia as a public right?

[mdittmar]

We have,shall the pro-death movement adopt these other children as part of their mission?

[baseball_fan]

"We have, shall the pro-death movement adopt these other children as part of their mission?"

That would be the ideal.

[knuthom]

Traditionally, women who have just delivered consult a Hindu holy man called a pandit on when to start breast-feeding.

Why are they asking a man about breastfeeding. It seeems to me that a woman, who has done it successfully several times, would make much more sense.

[CGTRWK]

The root of the terrible poverty and unrest in those parts of the world is overpopulation. There are more people than the local economies are developed to adequately support, and the squalor that results is exactly as one would expect.

There are any number of ways to spend Western money to temporarily sustain even larger populations over there. This improves noone's lot, it only spreads their resources that much more thinly.

The last thing Africa needs is three million more penniless, unemployable squatters every year.

[baseball_fan]

"There are more people than the local economies are developed to adequately support"

That indeed describes to a significant extent the tragic situation there leading to the deaths of these newborns. I was in some ways seeing if there might be a parallel to the often tragic situations in women's lives when they choose to abort a life. Presumably a large percentage of these 4 million women would have chosen to abort if given the choice because they recognized the impossibility of the situation, but not having that choice the deaths occurred afterwards.

If our goal is saving children's lives, does there not have to be an environment, as you point out, sufficiently supportive of women and families that they can care for a child? If that is the case, would it not be efficient for the prolife movement to spend a significant percentage of their resources in saving these newborns as in trying to prevent abortions (being unfamiliar with the situation, they may already be doing this)?

In terms of numbers capable of being saved, the same dollars spent creating a sustainable environment in these third world countries might go much further. So too supporting family friendly policies here might have the same effect. The debate so often gets framed as good versus bad rather than sustainable versus unsustainable (there are many abuses obviously that do not fall under the heading of "necessity" but rather that of "license" as in immoral). If actual adoption is advocated, could not many of these third world children who would die otherwise not also be adopted?

It may be that the prolife and the prochoice groups could then find some common ground on at least the "sustainable" issue part regardless of their other differences and save more lives in being unified to that degree rather than seemingly just always talking past each other. But I readily admit being out of my depth here; these are very difficult issues.

[CGTRWK]

Interesting thoughts. And no easy answers, because anything - or nothing - we choose to do will involve alot of death and alot more suffering.

One thing I am convinced of is that rigid ideological views that one particular variety of suffering - whether that's abortion, or starvation and disease, or empty lives of squatting - is the prime evil are not helpful. Work to reduce one comes largely at the expense of swelling others.

That's not to say it's a hopeless zero sum situation where no good can be done, but things need to be weighed against each other and you can't do that if (insert topic) is the greatest evil in existence.

[baseball_fan]

"One thing I am convinced of is that rigid ideological views that one particular variety of suffering - whether that's abortion, or starvation and disease, or empty lives of squatting - is the prime evil are not helpful. Work to reduce one comes largely at the expense of swelling others.

That's not to say it's a hopeless zero sum situation where no good can be done, but things need to be weighed against each other and you can't do that if (insert topic) is the greatest evil in existence."

Agreeing with your statement, I think we would both probably also agree that if we were the said children involved, we might feel differently. A very sad state of affairs indeed, yet life has to be celebrated in spite of all the tragedy for the blessings it does give.