Community Kangaroo Mother Care for Improving Child Survival and Brain Development in Low Birth Weight Newborns

While newborn and child survival remains a priority, optimal development of survivors is receiving increasing attention. Interventions that impact both survival and development should be prioritized for action. Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) improves survival, and potentially neurodevelopment, in preterm and low birth weight infants in hospital settings but its coverage remains low. Innovation is required to allow the community-based delivery of KMC by front-line workers. This could greatly accelerate scale up and sustainability of this intervention in low resource settings. The proposed randomized trial is planned in a setting where 40% of births take place at home. Early discharge (as early as within 12 hours of birth) is common for facility births, often at the request of families for social and cultural reasons. Many of the hospitals do not have incubators for the care of very small babies.