Ten years ago – in the late 2000s – the government of Nepal was confronted with high infection-attributable neonatal mortality. There was new, locally-generated evidence that the use of the antiseptic chlorhexidine for the care of the newborn cord stump could substantially reduce the risk of such deaths but – at the time – no global-level recommendation. This paper traces the evolution of chlorhexidine introduction and scale-up and documents program performance once the program had reached the national scale, in terms of “implementation strength” and population-level “effective coverage.”
Authors: Stephen Hodgins, Leela Khanal, Nira Joshi, Suzanne Penfold, Sabita Tuladhar, Parsu Ram Shrestha, Bikash Lamichhane, Penny Dawson, Tanya Guenther, Samikshya Singh, Ganesh Sharma, and Peter Oyloe
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