Piloting a Neonatal Advanced Life Support Program

Since 1990, global neonatal mortality has significantly decreased due to medical training advances. While Ethiopia has halved neonatal mortality, its rate is still ten times higher than the global average of high-income countries. The "Golden Minute" - the first minute of life after birth - is critical, especially in addressing neonatal asphyxiation (the inability to breathe at birth). To reduce neonatal asphyxiation, Wax and Gold collaborated with St Paul's Hospital Millennium Medical College in Addis Ababa to apply lessons from international standard health worker training programs to design a new, enhanced training program called the Neonatal Advanced Life Support program. Wax and Gold's low-dose, high-frequency model balances time spent on training and knowledge transfer with skills practice and follow-up training. Following a promising pilot, Ethiopia's Ministry of Health expressed interest in adopting and scaling the enhanced program, pending a more extensive study. With support from the DIV Fund, Wax and Gold is testing its training program in seven medical facilities in Addis Ababa to determine its relative effectiveness in less-resourced medical facilities. If it proves effective across facilities, the training program has the potential to reduce neonatal mortality across 22,000 annual deliveries and inform a planned scale-up to 14 regional health centers.