In Sri Lanka, Priyanthi, a 28-year-old mother in the Matale District, remembers the evening that she carried her daughter, Madushika, 7 kilometres to the closest medical facility. It was about five in the late afternoon and almost dark when the small woman began her frightful journey with the 18-month-old toddler in her arms struggling for air. Stumbling over the fallen branches and underbrush cluttering the narrow dirt paths, she heard her daughter’s laborious gasps growing weaker. By 6 p.m., she and the baby reached the clinic. The doctor’s words still haunt this woman with tired eyes and underscore her race against the clock. Had she delayed the trip by a mere 15 minutes, she remembers him saying, her baby, whose chest cold had turned into pneumonia, would have been dead. Had Madushika, now a healthy five-year-old, been born just a decade earlier, without the availability of life-saving drugs, the pneumonia would have likely won the race.

Priyanthi’s children, Madushika and her younger brother Madusha have benefited from Sri Lanka’s system of health services and early childcare programs. Both children were born in the relative safety of a hospital, like nearly 90 per cent of Sri Lankan live births today. When the young mother was pregnant with her two-year-old son, she received regular health check-ups in the village clinic and pregnancy advice from the village midwife. She learned how talking to her infant during breastfeeding would improve his mind and body. She learned that cooing and babbling to her child in response to his sounds, commonly called ‘motherese’, would help the baby boy learn to talk.

Once released from the hospital, Priyanthi and her newborn participated in a program in which trained volunteers visited them in their home. Madusha’s height and weight continued to be monitored. Priyanthi also continued to get support and advice on the importance of touching, talking and singing, as well as on bathing and feeding her baby. Priyanthi’s family is 1 of 22 families from Ambanganga, a small village about 25 kilometers from Matale, involved in a home-based program