The Lancet: Maternal, newborn, and child health and the Sustainable Development Goals — a call for sustained and improved measurement
John Grove and Mariam Claeson of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and colleagues on behalf of the Kirkland Group

“…A more robust data system to measure the coverage of interventions known to be effective in reducing maternal, newborn, and child mortality — similar to those that currently exist for vaccines and malaria — will be essential to enhance services, improve health, and achieve long-term goals in mortality reduction. Building on, extending, and refining this system for measuring maternal, newborn, and child health is an urgent task for the global community, as well as national and local governments. … We call on governments, partners, and technical experts to join in the movement for improved measurement for maternal, newborn, and child health, building on what is known and endorsing an urgent, evidence-based agenda for action and development to do better in the immediate future” (10/17).

Devex: A new option for saving newborn lives
Bina Valsangkar, newborn technical adviser for the Saving Newborn Lives program at Save the Children

“…Earlier this month, the World Health Organization released groundbreaking guidelines [on managing possible serious bacterial infection in young infants when referral is not feasible], based on rigorous research trials published in The Lancet. … The studies found that newborns with possible serious bacterial infection, whose caregivers could not accept hospital referral, could be safely treated with a combination of oral and injectable antibiotics closer to home, as an outpatient. Although hospital care remains the standard of care, we now have a safe, effective alternative for when a trip to the hospital is not possible … Most deaths from newborn infections are preventable, and these guidelines, if adopted and effectively implemented, could save the lives of hundreds of thousands of newborns every year” (10/15).