If one looks beyond the shrill rhetoric of the Gorakhpur medical hospital case, it seems the last one year has been good for newborn babies in Uttar Pradesh. Data available with the health department show remarkable improvement in the performance of neonatal units in 2017-18 compared to the previous years.

The special care newborn units (SCNUs) usually operate as part of a district level hospital. They are meant to save sick babies upto 28 days, either born within the hospital, nursing homes or at homes. They are crucial because studies have found that the daily risk of mortality in the first month of life is 30 times higher than the second month. In fact, two-thirds of all baby deaths happen during the first four weeks.

Here's what the numbers look like: In 2015-16, a total of 42,474 newborns were admitted to SCNUs, while 31,390 were successfully discharged. In 2016-17, the number of admissions rose to 55,288 but the percentage of babies discharged came down, with the figure closing at 37,832.

In 2017-18, however, the rise in the number of newborns admitted to SCNUs was steep at 85,259 while the percentage of them discharged was stable at about 65 per cent (a total of 55,759 were discharged).

From 2016-17 to 2017-18, deaths came down from 11.4 per cent to 10.6 per cent, referral cases increased from 5,024 to 10,429 (9.44 percent to 12.6 percent), cases of left-against-medical-advice went up from 8.16 percent to 9.2 percent. Commonly called LAMA, these are cases when a patient leaves a hospital against the advice of their doctor, and thus are not counted in the discharged list.

Overall, close to 25,000 more babies with medical complications went home healthy last year than two years ago.