Improving child health--newborn screening for all?

Over the last 40 years newborn screening has been an undoubted success and many thousands of children have been saved from mental retardation and other problems because of early diagnosis of their disorders. Now many diseases can be diagnosed early by newborn screening and many more are on the horizon. It must be a long-term goal to extend newborn screening tests to all children but, in areas of the world where healthcare delivery is insufficient, solving other health problems has to take precedence over introducing newborn screening. If it is decided to introduce newborn screening in a region where currently there is none screening for congenital hypothyroidism alone should be started before anything else at all is attempted so that proper systems can be put in place. There is an exciting future for newborn screening ahead. If new programmes are approached with proper caution maximal benefit will be achieved from newborn screening, which is one of the few clearly effective preventive strategies in healthcare.