Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR) is defined as the number of new-born deaths (that is in the first month of life) per thousand live births. The global neonatal mortality today account for more than 45% of all child deaths before the age of five and is estimated to be about 2.7 million in 2015 [1]. More than 98% of these deaths occur in developing nations like regions of Africa and South Asia. Reports [1,2] have shown that India has about 10 times higher NMR compared to the western world. NMR in India was 29 as of 2015, a 49% decrease in NMR since 1990. However, taking into account its burgeoning population, approximately 696000 new-borns died in 2015, nearly 25% of the global neonatal deaths [1]. The authors in [3,4] have found that hypothermia is a major cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality, especially in rural and other resource constrained settings. Hypothermia for neonates is defined as an aberrant thermal state of diminution of their body’s temperature below 36.5 C. Further decrease in body temperature causes respiratory depression, acidosis, decreases the cardiac output, decreases the platelet function, increases the risk of infection and may even lead to fatality in the absence of pre-emptive care.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Robert Bosch Center for Cyber Physical Systems, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, for financially supporting this study.
References
- Levels and Trends in Child Mortality Report, 2015, http://www.who.int/maternal_child_adolescent/documents/levels_trends_child_mortality_2015/en/.
- Global Health. Causes of neonatal and child mortality in India: a nationally representative mortality survey. The Lancet, 376(9755):1853–1860, 2010.
- Kumar, V., Mohanty, S., and Kumar, A., Effect of community based behaviour change management on neonatal mortality in Shivgarh, Uttar Pradesh, India: a cluster -randomised controlled trial. The Lancet,372(9644):1151 – 1162, 2008.
- Kumar, V., Shearer, J. C., Kumar, A., and Darmstadt, G. L., Neonatal hypothermia in low resource settings: a review. Journal of Perinatology, 29:401–412, 2009.