Basic care for all newborns should include promoting and supporting early and exclusive breastfeeding, keeping the baby warm, increasing hand washing and providing hygienic umbilical cord and skin care, identifying conditions requiring additional care and counselling on when to take a newborn to a health facility. Newborns and their mothers should be examined for danger signs at home visits. At the same time, families should be counselled on identification of these danger signs and the need for prompt care seeking if one or more of them are present. Newborns with who have preterm birth or low birth weight, who are sick or are born to HIV-infected mothers need special care.