Scaling up newborn care in Afghanistan: opportunities and challenges for the health sector.

Newborn health in Afghanistan is receiving increased attention, but reduction in newborn deaths there has not kept pace with declines in maternal and child mortality. Using the continuum of care and health systems building block frameworks, this article identifies, organizes and provides a synthesis of the available evidence on and gaps in coverage of care and health systems, programmes, policies and practices related to newborn health in Afghanistan. Newborn mortality in Afghanistan is related to the nation's weak health system, itself associated with decades of conflict, low and uneven coverage of essential interventions, demand-side and cultural specificities, and compromised quality.