To Reduce Neonatal Mortality, Nigeria Is Taking A Simple Treatment Nationwide

At the Okene Zonal Hospital in Kogi State, Nigeria, an infant's tiny face—still flecked with a newborn patina because the boy had been born less than an hour earlier—was barely visible. The baby, wrapped in billows of Ankara cloth, lay on a small mattress inside a slatted metal basket whose graceful curves evoked a Victorian-era birthing implement, a basket that had likely been in continuous use since the hospital opened in 1960, the year Nigeria became independent.

Despite the heat of the mid-July rainy season, the deputy ward matron dressed the child in a terrycloth jumpsuit, booties, and a large winter hat. Then she triple-gloved her hands and, holding the baby's recently cut umbilical cord stump in her left hand, spread a thick layer of chlorhexidine gel along the length of the stump.

The infant was lucky on at least two counts. First, in a country where the minister of health tweets about Nigeria's "broken health system"¹ and the neonatal mortality rate is among the highest in the world, the child happened to be born in one of a handful of Nigerian states making a concerted effort to promote the use of chlorhexidine gel, a low-cost intervention that instantly reduced his chances of dying from the sort of massive infection that in Nigeria and other developing countries can all too easily take root in a newborn's umbilical cord stump.

Read the full text article on the Health Affairs website.