Understanding the Neonatal Health Situation of Bangladesh in Relation to Other South Asian Countries

Background: Bangladesh has reduced the neonatal mortality rate from 52 to 28 per 1,000 live births during 1993 -2014 to achieve the target of Millennium Development Goal -4 by 2015. Though, Bangladesh couldn’t reach the target, its achievement is appreciable. But, it still remains a challenge for Bangladesh. For that knowing the causes of it and taking necessary steps for improving neonatal health situation in Bangladesh has become essential. And so, in this article it is tried to present, analyse and inter-relate recent data in such a way that the barriers could be identified easily for taking future steps.

Main Text: This manuscript is prepared considering three objectives: to present the neonatal health situation of Bangladesh on the basis of contemporary data, to compare the situation of Bangladesh with other South Asian countries and to identify some scopes for improving the neonatal health situation of Bangladesh. A rigorous literature review has been done as a main method of data collection from some renowned journals and research reports of different nation al and international health organisations published from 2001 to May 2018 and tables and graphs were made according to the objectives. The data analysis explores that, the neonatal mortality in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan are respectively 46, 36, 28, 23, 22 and 18, whereas Maldives and Sri Lanka has only 5 neonatal deaths per 1,000 live births in 2015, which is a great difference. Again, premature birth is high in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. In case of Bangladesh, the mothers’ from lowest to middle wealth quintile, the neonatal mortality rate is high than highest wealth quintile in Bangladesh where the neonatal mortality rate is nearly twice which should be a matter of great concern for Bangladesh. Besides, for some cases, neonatal health situation of Bangladesh at the national level remains in a struggling situation to improve like Sri-Lanka because of the rural area backwardness, for examples postnatal care, essential newborn care, perinatal mortality, tetanus toxoid vaccination, and for some case, all countries, except Maldives and Sri Lanka, in South Asia have shown lower participation, take an example of postnatal care for newborns.

Conclusion: Among the South Asian countries, the condition of neonatal health is not sophisticated. Many countries are still showing a poor condition in various indicators of neonatal health and need to improve more. So, this paper will be very supportive for the neonatal health researchers, medical anthropologist, medical practitioners for further studies and specifically for the health-policy makers and corresponding authorities to take necessary actions for overcoming the obstacles of improving neonatal health situation in South Asian countries as well as Bangladesh.