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Neonatal Resuscitation: Breathing Life Into Struggling Newborns

Even in ideal birthing situations infants sometimes experience difficulty breathing on their own. Insufficient oxygen in the first few minutes of life can have a profound effect on normal development and even the survival of an otherwise healthy baby. The knowledge and skills of medical personnel involved in the birthing process can make a critical difference.

Training in neonatal resuscitation techniques is at the core of AIHA's Neonatal Resuscitation Program and Neonatal Resuscitation Training Centers (NRTCs). The Centers-developed jointly with partners-provide cost-effective, clinical training with standardized, reproducible curricula, easily adapted to local needs.

At the NRTCs obstetrician/gynecologists, neonatologists, pediatricians, nurses, midwives, and anesthesiologists learn how to assist infants who experience difficulty breathing on their own. Practitioners are taught basic steps using minimal equipment such as thermal management, infant positioning, suctioning, and stimulation as well as more specialized skills such as ventilation, intubation, and the use of medications and volume.

These newly acquired skills may then be easily implemented in home institutions, thereby decreasing infant mortality rates and developmental disabilities that may result from blood and oxygen deprivation during the first minutes of life. Statistics show that regions where these neonatal resuscitation techniques are taught have lowered their infant mortality and morbidity rates.

In collaboration with local and national ministries of health, AIHA and its partners have facilitated mandatory neonatal resuscitation training for delivery room staff, adopted the inclusion of such training in medical school curricula, and in some cases rolled out national neonatal resuscitation programs. Through conferences and workshops where infant care techniques are taught, AIHA's Neonatal Resuscitation Program has helped pave the way for sustainable long term advances in neonatal care throughout the NIS and CEE.