The National movement of neonatal resuscitation in India

Birth asphyxia is an important cause of preventable neonatal morbidity and mortality in developing countries. Of the 26 million births each year in India, 4-6 per cent of neonates fail to establish spontaneous breathing at birth. These babies can be helped, if healthcare professionals present at the time of birth are skilled in the art of neonatal resuscitation. Since the introduction of the Neonatal Resuscitation Programme (NRP) by the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Heart Association, organized training programmes for instructors and providers have been launched in India, under the aegis of the National Neonatology Forum (NNF) since 1990. The initial goal was to train the trainers and provide them with the necessary equipment. The NNF created a national faculty of 150 pediatricians and nurses for NRP by conducting certification courses in various regions of the country. The certified faculty members in turn trained 12,000 healthcare professionals in various parts of India over the following 2 years. Simultaneously, in several teaching institutions, NRP was introduced into the curricula of medical and nursing students. This programme provides a uniform, systematic and action-oriented approach to the resuscitation of the newborn. Prospective evaluation of the resuscitation programme in teaching hospitals has revealed the use of rational resuscitation practices and a significant decline in asphyxia-related deaths.