The Golden Minute identifies the steps that a birth attendant must take immediately after birth to evaluate the baby and stimulate breathing.
USAID is launching an initiative to reduce infant mortality worldwide by expanding access to high-quality, affordable newborn resuscitation training materials and devices, improving the competence of birth attendants to resuscitate newborns, strengthening health systems, and promoting global commitment and resources for life-saving newborn care. Check out this blog by Dr. George Little of Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center on the Golden Minute of Neonatal Resuscitation at the Global Health Council.
Helping Babies Breathe: a Global Public Private Alliance is an initiative of USAID, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Save the Children/Saving Newborn Lives, Laerdal Medical AS, and a number of other global health organizations.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that one million babies die each year from birth asphyxia, or the inability to breathe immediately after delivery. Approximately the same number of stillbirths each year are linked to events during labor. A significant percentage of these may be live-born babies who simply do not breathe or move at birth, but could be resuscitated with simple measures. Helping Babies Breathe will teach these essential skills to birth attendants in developing countries. Read more about USAID’s child and newborn health programs.
HBB is unique in that it brings together a diverse group of organizations to respond to multi-faceted program needs that include training materials, equipment, systems strengthening, evaluation, and advocacy for increased national commitment and resources. Each member of the partnership will play a unique and complementary role that, together, will leverage their resources, creativity, and expertise to scale up newborn resuscitation globally.
