Barriers to implementing sustainable national newborn screening in developing health systems

Newborn screening is a comprehensive public health prevention system that seeks to identify newborns at increased risk for certain inherited congenital conditions. Institutionalizing and sustaining this system presents a formidable challenge within developing public health systems often competing with other healthcare priorities and political agendas. We review some of our experiences in overcoming newborn screening implementation challenges and discuss recent efforts to encourage increased newborn screening through support networking and information exchange activities in the Middle East/North Africa and in the Asia Pacific Regions.