Every year, about 2.8 million children die in the first month of life, with 98% of these deaths occurring in developing countries. Neonatal infections, including sepsis and meningitis, are estimated to cause over 420,000 deaths each year, with 136,000 attributed to pneumonia.
The WHO Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Aging (MCA) has developed two sets of recommendations that address severe bacterial infection (0-59 days) in young infants over the years 2012-2015 (Recommendations for management of common childhood conditions, 2012; Managing possible serious bacterial infection in young infants when referral is not feasible, 2015).
The WHO MCA department is now planning to update the recommendations using a full WHO Guideline Review Committee (GRC) process. This includes the development of evidence to decision frameworks and the formulation of a guideline development group (GDG) of experts to review the evidence and make recommendations.
The primary objective of WHO’s recommendations is to provide a foundation for the strategic policy and programme development needed to ensure the sustainable implementation of effective interventions for improving provision and uptake of quality care for all newborns. Health professionals and policy-makers responsible for developing national and local protocols and health policies constitute the main target audience of these recommendations. Women and their families are an additional target audience as users of the services.
The guidance provided is evidence-informed and covers topics that were selected and prioritized by an international, multidisciplinary group of newborn health professionals, social scientists, programme implementers and consumers during scoping meetings held in in March and June 2022.
A series of virtual Guideline Development Group (GDG) meetings will now be held in the last quarter of 2023 to review the updated evidence base for these recommendations.
In keeping with the requirements of the WHO Guidelines Review Committee and the WHO Compliance, Risk Management and Ethics Office, we are posting online short biographies of the GDG members. The listed candidates have also submitted a Declaration of Interest form stating any conflict of interests. WHO has applied its internal processes to ensure that the performance of the above tasks by members of this group will be transparent and without any significant conflict of interests that could affect the credibility of the guideline (academic, financial, or other).
Nevertheless, WHO invites the general public to review the experts and stakeholders involved and provide feedback regarding any member deemed to have a significant conflict of interest with respect to the terms of reference for this group. Comments and feedback should be cordial and constructive, and sent to mncah@who.int
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