Sanitation For Infants In Rural Areas

India is one of the countries with the highest mortality rate in the world. Rural areas of India are not as developed as the cities and they are not provided with sufficient medical help. Newborn babies need to be handled with extreme care.

In order for a healthy baby to be born, the mother should not be exposed to contaminated water or unhygienic living conditions which increases the risk of infection of the pregnant mother. This can also lead to the low weight of the baby and preterm deliveries which has at times lead to the death of the infant.

Repeated infections are the main cause of chronic malnutrition. Overcrowding, dilapidated houses, and consumption of impure water is the major cause for serious infections leading to a high mortality rate of infants and women post giving birth.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) aims at prioritizing and improving sanitation to avoid adverse effects on the mother and the infant. The Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) intervention can prevent 860,000 child deaths from under-nutrition and poor sanitation.

Poor sanitation can promote hookworm infection which causes maternal anemia. This indirectly affects the growth and development of the infant.

In the current Covid-19 situation, the baby has to be taken care of with all necessary measures. Each tool used has to be sanitized completely to prevent the virus from infecting the infant. In rural areas, this provision of sanitized medical tools and other safety measures are not always available. When cases were at their peak, a lot of deaths were seen of babies aged not more than 10 days old.

Precautions are being taken and there has been some visible progress but pregnant mothers and newborn babies are still extremely prone to infections and diseases in the rural areas, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the virus going around, the risk of getting infected is even higher. The importance of sanitation and hygiene keeps growing by the day as we discuss more serious and fatal diseases.

Urbanization not only brings about industrial development but also new medical knowledge over the years. However, it will take a long time for the rural areas to reach this level of medical development, and hence Gift of Nutrition has been conducting donation drives to collect sanitizers, soaps, and much more to help these tribal villagers in their fight against COVID-19.

Help us now by donating at Gift of Nutriton.

Written by

Yashodhara Ray.