Healthcare of the Newborn

Improved newborn health depends to a considerable extent on the health of the mother before and during pregnancy. Antenatal care with proper home-based maternal cards as well as prenatal care with monitoring of maternal nutrition and foetal growth and well-being are thus of importance for detecting babies at risk for growth retardation and perinatal asphyxia. The most important thing is not monitoring per se, but to link the monitoring with intervention, including supplementation of food, iron, vitamins and antenatal TT immunisation and active management of the delivery.