2015 Finalists

Kenya has registered the lowest percentage decline in maternal mortality ration among the USAID 24 priorities countries; 17% between 1990 and 2013. An overwhelming percentage of women in rural hard-to-reach communities continue to deliver at home without skilled attendance. To address the problem of low uptake of skilled delivery and improve maternal outcomes, the Kenyan Government introduced the Free Maternal Care in 2013, removing fees for delivery in all public health facilities.

Hypothermia and infection are among top health issues facing newborns in LMIC. Regular temperature monitoring is an effective means of detection and prevention of hypothermia but in our extensive field research, we observed that newborn temperature monitoring is rarely practiced in under-resourced clinics and uneducated homes. After vetting the need with over 75 paediatricians and filtering through several proposed solutions, we are developing Bempu, a novel, simple low-cost newborn temperature monitoring wristband.

Mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) remains the primary cause of HIV infection in infants in developing countries. Timely HIV detection and ART initiation in HIV-infected mothers can effectively prevent MTCT. Many infants born to women living with HIV are undiagnosed owing to unavailability of nucleic acid amplification tests. Routine antibody-based screening tests are not applicable to the diagnosis of infants born to HIV-infected mothers because these infants have high levels of HIV antibodies from their mothers for the first 18 months regardless of their HIV status.

Birth asphyxia is the second leading cause of neonatal death, leading to close to one million deaths per year. Still today even simple things like proper ventilation may not be performed or not performed properly. There is a need to raise the quality of resuscitation in both facility and community-based births. A newly developed free-of-charge application for smartphones guides health workers to proper resuscitation and proper registration of interventions. It guides the user in a step by step approach with voice and imaging guidance.

New research has shown that FLWs are motivated for both extrinsic and intrinsic reasons; however, financial incentives typically appeal only to extrinsic motivation, and have been shown in numerous studies to erode intrinsic motivation. As FLWs increasingly adopt mobile technology, we believe there are important  opportunities to complement extrinsic incentives with tools and incentives that make service delivery more intrinsically rewarding. We hypothesize that gamification techniques can motivate FLWs to perform better and be more engaged in their work.

Annually, 120,000 HIV-exposed infants are born in Uganda with nearly 16,000 becoming HIV-infected through transmission from their HIV-positive mothers during pregnancy, delivery, or breastfeeding. Antiretroviral prophylaxis given from birth to six weeks of age can dramatically reduce the risk of transmission, yet 68% of HIV-exposed infants do not receive critical nevirapine (NVP) prophylaxis in Uganda. The Pratt Pouch, a foilized, polyethylene pouch (similar to a ketchup pouch) designed and proven to safely store NVP doses, offers an innovative way to expand NVP coverage.

Anaemia is a globally endemic and neglected condition that is responsible for significant complications in pregnancy and early life. The provision of high quality anaemia diagnostic information across pregnancy and childbirth is critical to successful treatment outcomes. Eva Diagnostics has developed AnemiPoint, a lab-accurate and affordable diagnostic, capable of guiding clinical pathways and interventions. AnemiPoint also enables data capture to be seamlessly integrated into standard care practices, removing the need for manual data entry and additional equipment.

Postpartum haemorrhage is the largest cause of maternal mortality in Tanzania, yet many of these women could be saved with a blood transfusion. Lack of fast, affordable delivery of blood profoundly restricts the number of lifesaving transfusions performed in the Dodoma region. We will use an autonomous Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) called Stork to transport screened and typed blood from a blood bank in Dodoma to peripheral health facilities, on-demand. In many cases, ground transport of blood would either be impossible or too costly using traditional means.

Preterm births continue to elude the advances in technology and remain to be important challenges in neonatal and maternal health across the globe. India has the highest number of preterm births in the world constituting about a quarter of the global total. The proposed project (through the genre of Science & Technology) uses stimulus responsive biomaterials to address this issue deriving inspiration from marine animals like mussel and puffer fish.

In Bangladesh nearly 2,000 women die from eclampsia and pre-eclampsia each year. A icddr,b study found that 24% severe preeclampsia (SPE) and eclampsia received loading MgSO4 by trained community health providers (CHP) and concluded that poor antenatal care (ANC) missed a large number of SPE. Therefore, SPE cases progressed to eclampsia and notified at later stage of pregnancy at the referral facility.  UPEHFPSC, one of the local government’s institutes in Bangladesh is neither aware about maternal health (MH) policy nor about their role to improve MH initiative.

Annually, 90,000 maternal deaths can be prevented by family planning (FP) use, and 1.6 million children under the age of five can be saved with adequate birth spacing. Postpartum women have high unmet need for FP and limited access to long-acting, reversible FP methods such as IUCDs. To improve postpartum (PPIUCD) training, Jhpiego evaluated learning on Mama-U simulators under a previous Saving Lives at Birth seed grant.

Infant, children and maternal mortality rates in Cambodia are among the worst in South-East Asia and 45% of children are stunted. Iron deficiency plays a significant role in these statistics but current methods of treatment for the condition are not effective: compliance rates are low and the overall impact small. Infection with HIV compounds these health challenges. The project will scale-up distribution of the Lucky Iron Fish™: an innovative, affordable, and clinically-proven solution to iron deficiency.

Worldwide, women and children in poor and rural communities face the challenges of pregnancy and infancy without supports in the home, community, or facility. Often faced with financial, nutritional and political insecurities, the majority of women struggle to care for their own and their children’s health. To address this, we developed a peer-support model that groups pregnant women together in the same community to receive maternal and child health services, called Chama cha MamaToto (chamas).

WHO estimates that two-thirds of newborn deaths could be prevented if effective health measures were provided during birth and in the first week of life. In Rwanda, 69% of births are facility-based, yet 46% of neonatal deaths still occur in the first day of life. To increase health-system capacity to prevent newborn deaths using evidence-based measures, Partners In Health has developed the All Babies Count (ABC) model, an intensive 18-month change acceleration process.

Early antiretroviral (ARV) treatment is of utmost importance for saving the lives of infants and children living with HIV. Up to 52% of children left untreated die before they reach their second birthday. For this reason, WHO released their strong recommendation to start children younger than three years of age (and infants greater than 14 days of age) on ARV treatment.

Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) continues to be the leading cause of maternal deaths worldwide resulting in an estimated 125,000 maternal deaths per year. Women who survive PPH suffer from severe anemia and are more likely to die within the following year. Most of these deaths are preventable with timely management of the bleeding, yet in low-resource settings (LRS), especially in rural areas, women have little access to proper care during delivery. Evidence to support the use and efficacy of uterine balloon tamponade (UBT) for PPH is growing, as is awareness and demand.

Preeclampsia (PE) is a leading cause of maternal and perinatal death, yet screening and timely treatment for the disease remain a unsolved problems in low-resource settings. A new, potentially breakthrough screening test for PE has been developed and evaluated on a limited scale and is now ready for large-scale evaluation and pre-introduction activities. The assay, based on the biomarker glycosylated fibronectin (GlyFn), predicts PE in the third trimester with sensitivity of 0.97 and specificity of 0.93.

PATH proposes to overturn persistently poor maternal and newborn health outcomes in Uttar Pradesh, India, by scaling up the proven and cost-effective Projecting Health approach to social and behavior change communication.

One woman dies in childbirth almost every hour in Tanzania. The use of a single and inexpensive dose of oral misoprostol at the time of delivery is a proven, and effective tool to reduce the likelihood of post-partum hemorrhage. At present, due to a multitude of barriers, women who deliver at home (50%) or in many health centres do not have access to oral misoprostol or other uterotonics.

Evolving case management of pneumonia and serious bacterial infections the WHO guidelines for neonates, infants and children require community and facility health workers to measure and assess various vital signs for which they have limited tools and often rely on subjective measures leading to underdiagnosing and overprescribing antibiotics. Also overlapping disease symptoms make it difficult for health workers to confidently triage infants or children.

Among the 2.8 million deaths each year in the neonatal period, 24% are attributable to infections.  Observational data suggests that maternal handwashing could prevent neonatal infections and death.  Handwashing promotion is a relatively weak component of neonatal care counseling, typically not addressing barriers to hand washing relevant to mothers of newborns in high neonatal mortality settings.  Barriers to handwa

We have developed a sustainable barcode-based incentive system that encourages “loyal health visits”. Pilot proof was undertaken for child and mother vaccinations with strong evidence that our Barcode Mother and Child Wellness Card innovation could very quickly elicit a positive behavioral response for immunization adherence in low resource smallholder settings.

Iron, folic acid and B12 deficiency contributes to maternal,infant and neonatal deaths annually. Folic acid deficiency also leads to serious birth defects and neonatal development problems. Salt is universally consumed at a constant, predictable level independently of social status. Our approach is to develop innovative technology for incorporating these micronutrients into salt at levels that can have a significant beneficial health effect.

Currently, the three options for managing prolonged second stage of labour are forceps, vacuum extractor or caesarean section. All these interventions require relatively expensive equipment (e.g. operative theatre for caesarean section, maintenance of vacuum extractor) and highly trained health professionals. In addition, all these options are associated with increased risk of maternal and perinatal complications.