Dear Editor,
We would like to thank Dr. Lamont and
colleagues for their interesting commentary.1 The
authors point out very pressing topics that deserve more attention than
we could provide in the original manuscript.
They expressed concerns in their letter towards
the heterogeneity of the data that were used in our meta-analysis. If
incidences differ between regions and populations, absolute numbers on
colonisation and neonatal infections might not be comparable. However,
new policies were implemented in various settings, where differences in
outcomes were measured under the same local circumstances. So as rightly
mentioned by Lamont et al, data from the US cannot and should not be
used as a blueprint for other parts of the world.1 Yet
the general trend in developed countries that we observed, might shed
some new light on the respective effectiveness of the strategies
currently
available.