Saving Babies Lives

The central hypothesis of this study is that a neonatal healthcare programme that has a significant impact on neonatal mortality and which spans the healthcare journey from village to referral hospital can be developed and implemented in a low-resource rural setting. This study is a five-year cluster-randomised trial, covering a rural and isolated province in North-Eastern Cambodia. The intervention of this study is the Saving Babies' Lives programme, which is a comprehensive, contextual and iterative neonatal healthcare package. The Saving Babies' Lives programme comprises a training programme for primary care facilities, and participatory action research with community health workers (known in Cambodia as village health support group volunteers). The control is no intervention; standard government service continues. Qualitative and quantitative data collection supports improvements in the iterative programme, and evaluation of the study, with the intention of creating a scalable blueprint. Wellcome Trust grant number 220211.