What is the impact of COVID-19 pandemic years on Deliveries and Home Based New Born Care in India? A cross-sectional comparative research study, Jan 2018-2021Dec
Authors: Kumar Dr Piyush 
Published: February 2022

Even before the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic era, an estimated 2.8 million PW (pregnant women) and new born died every year, or 1 every 11 seconds, mostly of preventable causes. There is need of immediate investment in health workers capacity building, equipment, medicines to ensure that every mother and new born is in safe pair of hands who are able to prevent and treat complications of and during pregnancy, delivery and birth. Every year 25 million children are born in India accounting for one fifth of the global child births and every minute one baby dies. It is a fact that 46 per cent of all maternal mortality and 40 per cent of neonatal mortality happen during labour or in the first 24 hours after birth. The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has led to disruption of health services globally. I assessed the effect of the ongoing pandemic on the Deliveries and Home Based New Born Care (HBNC) in India. The author is curious and suspects a rise in maternal and neonatal mortality due to possible negative effects of COVID-19 on maternal institutional delivery and HBNC. Hence author decided to find out answer to the research question mentioned as title above. I conducted a retrospective cross-sectional comparative study among total numbers of women and newborn who have received delivery and HBNC care at different health facilities in 36 states and union territories across India during the pandemic years with pre-pandemic years (comparing 2020 and 2021(forecasted up to December 2021 with available data from January2021 to May 2021) with previous two years of pre-pandemic era i.e. 2018-2019). The data for the research study is extracted from electronic records of HMIS (health management information system) of MoHFW (ministry of health and family welfare), Govt. of India and analysed with stata and Microsoft office. The mean number of home deliveries attended by SBA [(Skill Birth Attendant) (Doctor/Nurse/ANM/ Midwife)] during the pandemic year 2021 with total number of observation of 5 months of 2021(January to May) forecasted up to December 2021 across India was 13370.27938, for years 2020, 2019, 2018 it was 16429.25, 19006.58, 21317.83 respectively with total number of observation of 12 months across India for these three years. This research study revealed that pandemic years have negative impact on number of home deliveries attended by SBA [(Skill Birth Attendant) (Doctor/Nurse/ANM/ Midwife)]. This research study revealed that pandemic years have negative impact on number of home deliveries attended by SBA [(Skill Birth Attendant) (Doctor/Nurse/ANM/ Midwife)]. There is a (projected) decrease of 37.28% in mean number of home deliveries attended by SBA in 2021 as compared to 2018. This novel research study revealed that during pandemic years 2020 and 2021 all the variables reduced quantitatively except Number of PW given Tablet Misoprostol during HD which increased in 2020 (first pandemic year).The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had negative effects on Deliveries and Home Based New Born Care (HBNC) in India. More research is required to investigate the direct and indirect consequence of the pandemic on birth and provision of HBNC as well as the health facility type which are not performing well in providing respectful maternity care and newborn services during pandemic period. The facility based research analysis is under process by the author which will be available in next version of this article. Keywords: Home delivery, Institutional delivery, new born, care, pandemic year, covid-19,