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Home-Based Newborn and Child Care
A community based solution to the problem of Child Deaths
  Newborn deaths: A global problem
   Globally, 4 million neonatal deaths occur each year
       (State of the World's Newborns: Save the Children, Washington (2001)
  In India, 1.2 million neonatal deaths occur annually
      (State of India's Newborns: NNF/ save the Children, Washington/New Delhi (2004))
  In absolute terms it means that 1.2 million Indians born each  year never live
       even 4 weeks.
  The Neonatal Mortality Rate(NMR) in rural India is one and a half times that in urban area.
  The NMR of urban slums, where the poor urban Indians live, is one and half times that in rest of        the urban population.
Home-based Newborn and Child Care package developed by SEARCH provides a solution to the problem of newborn deaths. In the Gadchiroli field trial, this community based package was field tested for 8 years (1995 to 2003) in 39 villages in the Gadchiroli district (Maharashtra, India). It reduced neonatal mortality by 70% (more.....)

The HBNC package has also been tested in diverse settings (ANKUR Project) and has proved effective.

The HBNC package is delivered at the home of the newborn and mother by a trained community health worker. Besides routine care of the newborn, the CHW is trained to identify high risk babies and provide intensive care. She also diagnoses and manages morbidites such as hypothermia, breast feeding problems and sepsis besides assessment and if necessary management of birth asphyxia.

The Replication of HBNC

The success of HBNC in the Gadchiroli field trial prompted SEARCH to test its replicability (Project ANKUR:2001 to 2005). It proved that HBNC was indeed replicable. (more....)

Indian council of Medical Research, supported by Government of India has undertaken a replication study in 5 states (Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, maharashtra) of India over a population of 600,000. The training phase of the project has ended and it has entered the implementation phase of delivery of complete package of HBNC

In a convention held in New Delhi on august 10, 2006 it was unanimously declared (in the context of India) that "The time has now come that based on the evidence and learnings from, Gadchiroli, ANKUR and ICMR studies, we can take the HBNC for scaling up and should not delay further" (more....)

How to replicate HBNC?

For facilitating the replication of HBNC by others, SEARCH has developed and field tested successfully, appropriate methods  and  materials. These include the training manuals and training aids for training the community health workers. (more....)

SEARCH also provides training for different level of workers to implement HBNC. (more.....)