Unang Yakap: Early Care For Your Newborn

The Department of Health and the World Health Organization has launched a campaign called “Unang Yakap”, which aims to promote ways to take care of newborn children and their mothers.

Department of Health secretary Francisco Duque signed Administrative Order 2009-0025 on December 2009. This mandates the implementation of the Essential Intrapartum Newborn Care (EINC) Protocol, and sparked the Unang Yakap campaign that promotes this to the public.

What Is The EINC Protocol?

The Essential Intrapartum Newborn Care Protocol is a series of measures that are performed in order to provide safe and quality care for mothers within 48 hours of giving birth and up to a week of a newborn’s life.

• • First, the newborn is immediately and thoroughly dried. This step stimulates the newborn’s breathing.
    
  • Second, the newborn and the mother must come into physical contact with each other for at least six hours. This is done to prevent complications such as hypothermia, infection and hypoglycemia.
  • Third, the umbilical cord of a newborn is clamped for one to three minutes, or when the cord pulsations stop. The proper timing of umbilical cord cutting and clamping helps prevent a newborn’s brain from bursting a blood vessel and bleeding.
  • Fourth, the mother and her newborn are kept close and early breastfeeding is implemented. Early breastfeeding gives a newborn a substance called colostrum which boosts a newborn’s immunity against diseases.

Unang Yakap is an improvement on prenatal care. It promotes respectful birthing because:

• • it gives the mother the option to choose who she wants to be with as she gives birth;
  • the mother is mobile and within reason during labor; she is also able to choose her position during labor and delivery
  • the mother is given a non-drug pain relief before offering anesthesia;
  • there is spontaneous pushing in semi-upright position;
  • there is no episiotomy unless necessary;
  • there is active management of third stage labor; and use of partograph in labor monitoring

Most health centers and hospitals now perform this protocol on newborns. Prior to giving birth, you can give clear instructions that you want to perform Unang Yakap immediately after your baby is born.

References

1. Dra. Faith Alcazaren, “Newborn Care Bootcamp For New Moms”, during her talk at After 9: Everything You Need To Know After Giving Birth
2. http://www.wpro.who.int/philippines/areas/maternal_child_nutrition/newborn_mother_care/einc_protocols/en/
3. http://www.wpro.who.int/philippines/areas/lifecourse/unang_yakap/story_on_how_unang_yakap_came_about/en/
4. https://www.doh.gov.ph/unang-yakap
5. https://momcenter.com.ph/2019/03/20/unang-yakap-why-moms-should-include-it-in-their-birth-plans/