Assessment of the Performance of selected Special Care Newborn Units (SCANUs) in Bangladesh: A cross Sectional Study

Background: Government of Bangladesh initiated the Special Care Newborn Units (SCANU) in 2011 at selected district hospitals followed by its scale up in other districts with support from UNICEF and other partners. The objective of the study was to assess the performance of those SCANUs in Bangladesh. Methods: A cross-sectional study approach was applied for assessment of the performance of SCANU facilities compared to facilities without SCANU. Fifteen facilities with SCANUs and five facilities without SCANUs were selected from eight divisions of the country for the study. The selected SCANU and Non-SCANU facilities were of secondary level hospital with similar patient flow and workload. Quantitative data were collected from direct observation of the 20 facilities and interviews with 678 caregivers using a field-tested questionnaire. Caregivers were mothers of the infants (<59 days old) who were admitted and stayed for at least one day in those hospitals. Analysis was done using Stata version 15.1 and presented in tabular, graphical and numerical measures of central tendency and dispersion. Result: The results of the assessment found that 60% of SCANU facilities had KMC care services and 27% of SCANU facilities had rooming in services and special sick baby ward services but no such services was available in non-SCANU facilities. Equipment in the SCANUs such as resuscitation bag and mask, radiant warmers, phototherapy machines and to a large extent CPAP machines and Oxygen blenders were mostly available and functioning optimally. More than half of the SCANUs still need to have oxygen blenders, CPAP machines and transcutaneous bilirubinometers since they were not found/functional during the assessment. Majority of SCANU facilities 60%-80% reported no stock-outs of critical medications like dexamethasone, ceftriaxone and gentamicin which are critical for management of preterm and sick babies. A web-based online ‘Individual Case Tracking’ system has been developed for online reporting from all SCANUs by the Health Management Information System (HMIS) of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS). UNICEF was supporting its linkage to the district health information system (DHIS-2). There was a statistically significant difference between SCANUs and non-SCANUs with respect to the proportions of admissions. SCANUs are acting as referral destination for sick and small newborns as 41%-45% of the admitted newborns were either were born at home or in other facilities. Conclusion: The assessment findings will be helpful for country strategy for improving newborn care through expansion of SCANU expansion throughout the country