South-East Asia Region New-born and Birth Defects (SEAR-NBBD) Surveillance Initiative

The World Health Assembly Resolution WHA 63.17 in May 2010, identified actions to address birth defects to impact stillbirths and neonatal mortality and recommends setting up pf good surveillance systems to better understand the burden of birth defects. As in other places, in the South-East Asia Region, the availability of epidemiological data and the burden of birth defects is a challenge Member States do not have a national surveillance mechanism for birth defects. Small studies have been published from some Member States and national-level estimates are available from the Global March of Dimes Report 2006 only.

WHO-SEARO created an online integrated newborn-birth defects (SEAR-NBBD) database in 2014, to support data management for birth defects detected at birth, stillbirths and newborns in hospital settings. A network of hospitals with high client load of childbirth has been set up in the countries in consultation with ministries of health. Necessary training has been provided to the hospital staff for birth defects surveillance and stillbirths surveillance.

The hospital-based birth defects surveillance has been set up with the collaboration from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta (US CDC). The objectives of NBBD surveillance are:

• To define the magnitude of birth defects at birth
• To define the distribution of birth defects by time, person and place
• To identify clusters of birth defects (aggregation of cases)
• To strengthen services for affected babies in a timely manner
• To prepare and strengthen prevention strategies for birth defects and assess their impact

 The hospital stillbirth surveillance has been set up in selected hospitals to understand the feasibility and build capacity to facilitate scaling up of national stillbirth surveillance plans. A standard form was prepared for online surveillance system and ICD-PM coding has been used for definitive understanding of the possible cause of stillbirths.