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URAGAHALLI, India — About a year ago, Nagarathna, who uses only one name, was admitted to a local government hospital on the outskirts of India’s information technology hub of Bangalore, when she went into labor. A bone-rattling ride on a motorized three-wheeler transported her to the facility located a few miles from her village.

After six hours in labor, when she finally gave birth, the pain and exhaustion had become unbearable, she said, and she lost consciousness. When she came to, her child was dead.

“I didn’t even get a chance to see her, to hold her in my arms,” said Ms. Nagarathna, 21, cradling her second child, a month-old baby boy, earlier this spring.

Her daughter had suffered from birth asphyxia, caused by the inability of a newborn to either start or sustain breathing, which is not always fatal. Mother and child were transferred to a private hospital that had the one thing that could save the child, which was a ventilator. But it was too late — the baby survived barely an hour.

India has the highest number of newborn deaths in the world — nearly 780,000 babies under 28 days old die every year, with many deaths happening within 24 hours of birth, according to a series on newborn survival in The Lancet that was published Tuesday.

Around the world, nearly three million newborns die each year and an additional 2.6 million are stillborn. The Lancet report finds that progress in reducing these mortality rates is lagging even though simple interventions can be enormously effective.

“Our findings show that there is an urgent unmet need to provide timely, high-quality care for both mother and baby around the time of birth,” Joy Lawn of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who led the research published in The Lancet, said in a statement.

Most newborn deaths are preventable, the report said. In resource-poor environments, techniques like promoting of breastfeeding, keeping babies safe from infection and training in resuscitation techniques to tackle asphyxia, a common cause of death, are recommended. Incorporating these methods would require a mere $1.15 per person, the report estimated.

India has one of the highest neonatal mortality rates – that is, newborn deaths per 1,000 live births — and global progress in reducing newborn deaths has been slow compared to the steady decline witnessed in mortality rates of children under the age of 5.

The risk to life is magnified at the time of birth and in the first 24 hours, and the problem is worsened by deep inequalities in access to quality health care. Newborn babies in poorer households and marginalized communities are at greater risk of dying, according to a 2014 report by the British charity Save the Children.

Ms. Nagarathna’s family first took the pregnant woman to a government hospital because they couldn’t afford a private one. Her family is one of the poorer ones in the village of Uragahalli in Karnataka state; they grow ragi, or finger millet, on their tiny plot of land, and her husband works as a day laborer at a factory nearby.

The Save the Children report found that among the richest 20 percent in India, the newborn mortality rate was 26 per 1,000 births. Among the poorest, who have much less access to quality health care, this rate is more than double at 56 per 1,000 births. This divide is clearly visible among rural and urban households as well, the report noted.

The Lancet series confirms these findings, but it also emphasizes the lack of information about many of these deaths. Almost 5.5 million babies worldwide die every year without being recorded, which was flagged by The Lancet’s authors as one of the hurdles to improving the chances of survival of newborns.

“The lack of recording reflects the world’s acceptance that these deaths are inevitable,” Ms. Lawn said in the statement. “In reality, these deaths are nearly all preventable. Counting and naming every newborn is a statement that we expect that baby to survive and receive the care he or she needs, especially around birth.”

In an interview, Elizabeth Mason, one of the co-authors of a study and a member of the Lancet study group, said that ­“in the 21st century, no child should be born and die without a single piece of paper left behind to mark their life.”

This idea underpins a large-scale survey under way in India, which aims to complement the civil registration of deaths. The survey, called the Million Death Study, is collecting information on the causes of nearly a million deaths that occurred in India in the past decade by recording narratives from family members and relatives present during the death.

The survey, which is a collaboration between the Office of the Registrar General of India and the Center for Global Health Research in Bangalore, will also focus on the deaths of infants and mothers with the goal of showing that many of these deaths are preventable.

Rohit Bharadwaj, a senior government official handling the project, said the deaths of many newborns are not registered with the government because families don’t see the need of keeping that record.

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In Ms. Nagarathna’s case, her child died at a medical facility, but the family does not possess any official document of her death or birth.

When asked about the lack of documentation, Manjunath, the father of the dead child, said, shrugging, “It is not like it would have made a difference.”

The authors of The Lancet study view this as an important gap in their understanding of these deaths and the capacity for making decisions. “The voices of those who bear the burden of stillbirth and newborn deaths — the parents — are rarely heard,” Ms. Mason said. “This silence perpetuates the idea that newborn deaths and stillbirths are inevitable.”

Ms. Nagarathna’s baby was buried a stone’s throw away from their house in the family field. There is nothing at the spot to suggest that she lies there, and nothing in official records to prove that she ever existed.

Reporting for this story was supported by the OneWorld-POSHAN Fellowship grant.