Shajy Isac, Bidyadhar Dehury, Ravi Prakash, Nihal Hasan, John Anthony, Banadakoppa Manjappa Ramesh, Prakash P Javalkar, Vasanthakumar Namasivayam, Marissa L Becker, James Blanchard, Ties Boerma

INTRODUCTION

Essential newborn care (ENBC) practices are recommended for all births to improve neonatal survival. This paper aims to understand the facility-level variations and factors associated with the essential newborn care practices by providers in higher-level public health facilities in 25 high priority districts (HPDs) of Uttar Pradesh (UP).

METHODS

We used observational cross-sectional quantitative data from 48 selected public health facilities (23 district hospitals (DH) and 25 community health centres (CHC)—first referral units (FRU)) implemented in 25 HPDs of UP from February 2020 to May 2021. We defined ENBC practice as both cord care and initiation of breastfeeding within 1 hour of birth were practiced in normal deliveries by the staff nurse. Descriptive analysis was done based on data from 2603 newborns attended by 318 providers. A stratified analysis was done by DH and CHC-FRU.

RESULTS

Overall, essential newborn care was practiced among 26.1% of the newborns (26.2% in DH and 35.0% in CHC-FRU). The ENBC practice varied across facilities from 3.0% to 64.1% in DH and from 0% to 91.0% in CHC-FRU. The ENBC practice was about 2.3 times higher in facilities with a high level of skill and knowledge of the providers (39.0%) compared with the facilities with a low level of skill and knowledge (16.9%). Similar patterns of association between providers’ skills and knowledge of ENBC practices were observed in DH and CHC-FRU.

CONCLUSION

Skill and knowledge on ENBC components are significantly associated with the clinical practices of providers, with a high level of variability across facilities. This suggests a focused facility-based assessment and enhancement of the clinical competencies of the providers to improve the quality of care in public health facilities in UP.

Read More
SHARE:

Recent Post

Preventing vaccine drop-outs: Geographic and system-level barriers to full immunization coverage among children in Uttar Pradesh, India

Global interventions on routine immunization aim to achieve at least 90 percent immunization coverage of all vaccines as per national immunization schedules, aligning with the Immunization Agenda 2030. Some regions like Uttar Pradesh, India, require more efforts to meet this target. This study aims to understand the coverage gaps and design interventions to improve the immunization coverage in priority blocks of Uttar Pradesh.

PAHAL Issue 23

PAHAL Issue 23 highlights UPTSU’s contributions to improving healthcare in Uttar Pradesh. The key interventions include facilitating newborn care initiatives, launching training programs for healthcare staff, supporting ICDS in training Mukhya Sevikas, and improving vaccine coverage. These efforts demonstrate UP TSU’s commitment to making healthcare more accessible and effective across the state. The issue also highlights the activities conducted by the State Technical Support Unit TB – Uttar Pradesh, which includes the strategic push adopted to enhance the presumptive TB examination rate and also the training and pilot launch of the  Pharmacy app.

PAHAL Issue 22

The summer edition of this year’s PAHAL newsletter, highlights the remarkable progress UP-TSU has made in supporting the Health Department to advance public health across community, facility, and system levels in Uttar Pradesh.