The Ghana Health Service (GHS)has said its new action plan to reduce newborn deaths as part of attempt to reduce under-five mortality, would be an exclusive focus on newborn conditions. Dr. Issabella Sagoe-Moses, National Child Health Coordinator at the Ghana Health Service, says the Service would now focus more attention on newborns and treat issues affecting them as separate from other age groups of under 5-year-old. She told Joy News' Hannah Odame, "we [considered] all under 5 as one and just looked at interventions [to deal with their situation], then we realised that we were not making much progress". According to her, GHS realised that their lack of progress at improving under 5 mortality rate was the result of increasing newborn deaths - stressing the importance of the new paradigm shift. A new report from the Service reveals that at least 320 children die out of every 1000 children under five, but out of this figure 120 are newborns. Dr Sagoe-Moses said the Service would focus on issues such as breathing problems during delivery, infections, diarrhoea, pneumonia, among others - especially in the rural communities. According to her, those issues have been the cause of increasing infant mortality rate. Also, health experts say the survival of babies depends on factors such as medication available, immunisation and adequate space. Dr. Okai Braku of the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit at the Ridge Hospital in Accra, however, believes simple health practices such as hand washing mostly ignored by health professionals, contributes to the deaths. The disturbing revelation that 320 children die out of every 1000 under 5 children, has caused stakeholders in the health sector to also support the new action plan to ensure effective healthcare before, during and after childbirth. The stakeholders, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organisation (WHO), Ministry of Health and the GHS, met on July 22 to find ways of enforcing and improving new strategies to reduce the deaths to 25% by 2015 - which is the aim of MDG-4.