Saving Little Lives—Reducing Preterm and Low-Birth-Weight Mortality

Dear Colleagues,

Ethiopia had a neonatal mortality rate of 27 per 1000 live births in 2022 and was off track in its goal to achieve Sustainable Developmental Goal 3.2.2, which is to reduce neonatal mortality to at least 12 per 1000 live births by 2030.

Saving Little Lives (SLL) was a Global Financing Facility-supported program aimed at scaling up evidence-based, life-saving interventions for hospitalized neonates across 290 hospitals in Ethiopia, representing 82% of all Ethiopian hospitals. The program integrated evidence-based clinical interventions, quality improvement cycles, and data-driven decision-making. The SLL program was aimed at achieving 35% reduction in neonatal mortality in implementing facilities by increasing intervention coverage to 80% of eligible newborns, with a focus on preterm or low-birth-weight neonates.

This Special Issue includes 14 manuscripts from the SLL program, demonstrating that large-scale nationwide implementation was feasible and effective amidst health system gaps, armed conflict, the COVID-19 pandemic, and economic inflation. The evidence and innovative approaches presented in this Special Issue can be generalized and contextualized to similar programs in low-and middle-resource settings.

Prof. Dr. Siren Rettedal
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Publisher’s Notice

As stated above, the central purpose of this Special Issue is to present research from the project "Saving Little Lives – Reducing Preterm and Low Birth Weight Mortality", the Guest Editors’ contribution to this Special Issue may be greater than standard Special Issues published by MDPI. Further details on MDPI's Special Issue guidelines can be found here:https://www.mdpi.com/special_issues_guidelines. The Editorial Office and Editor-in-Chief of Children has approved this and MDPI’s standard manuscript editorial processing procedure (https://www.mdpi.com/editorial_process) will be applied to all submissions. As per our standard procedure, Guest Editors are excluded from participating in the editorial process for their submission and/or for submissions from persons with whom a potential conflict of interest may exist. More details on MDPI’s Conflict of Interest policy for reviewers and editors can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/ethics#_bookmark22.

• saving little lives
• prematurity
• low birth weight
• quality care
• newborn
• neonatal intensive care unit