Simple measures could save 1 million babies a year, doctors plead

A mother with her daughter and malnourished newborn in South Sudan, one of the 81 countries where low-cost intervention could save many new lives. Photograph: Albert González Farran/Norwegian Refugee Council

The lives of more than a million babies a year could be saved across the developing world if mothers were given access to simple, low-cost health measures such as vitamins, antimalarials and aspirin, a new analysis has found.

The study, focused on the “silent public health disaster” of babies being born “too small or too soon”, comes as the United Nations warns that progress on reducing newborn deaths and stillbirths has flatlined since 2015, and that patchy, underfunded antenatal care is partially to blame.