Every Newborn Action Plan

A global strategy launched in 2014 and endorsed by all 194 World Health Organization member states at the Sixty-Seventh World Health Assembly, developed jointly by WHO and UNICEF within the wider Every Woman Every Child framework and informed by the findings of The Lancet's Every Newborn series of research. The plan responds to a global crisis in newborn survival: newborn deaths account for 45 percent of all deaths among children under five each year, alongside roughly 2.6 million stillbirths and 303,000 maternal deaths annually, and it sets out a road map of strategic, evidence-based actions for ending preventable newborn deaths and stillbirths while also contributing to reductions in maternal mortality and morbidity. The plan initially set specific global and national milestones running to 2020, on the premise that at least two-thirds of newborn deaths could be prevented with the knowledge and tools already available, and its monitoring has since been extended, with the WHO Director-General reporting periodically to the World Health Assembly on progress toward its goals through 2030.