When Niranjan Thomas, head of the neonatology department at Christian Medical College (CMC) in Vellore, returned from stints in Australia and Canada, he tried to replicate practices he had seen there to tackle birth asphyxia, the condition resulting from newborns being deprived of oxygen.

"Poor nutrition and early marriage of parents are a major cause for birth asphyxia. This is why more cases are reported from rural areas and among the urban poor," says Thomas.But the machines that would help cool the newborns cost over Rs 15 lakh and most hospitals in India do not have them. This is despite the fact that close to 1,50,000 infants in India lose their lives to birth asphyxia annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)............Read more

Source web page: The Economic Times