Finalists

Most women in rural Mali give birth at home and with limited assistance, due to unmanageable distances between communities and health facilities, unsupported community health workers and the inability of the health system to track pregnant women and respond to high risk and emergency cases. As a result, Mali has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.

This 24 month project integrates innovative uses of technology with women’s on-the-doorstep personalized pregnancy diagnostic services and raises awareness of the need to obtain antenatal care, particularly in remote and nomad Kuchi populations, in Herat Province, Afghanistan. The project is staffed by women doctors, midwives and community health workers (CHWs) who work together across traditional boundaries to save women’s lives in pregnancy and childbirth.

China is a lower-middle income country, with a population of 1.34 billion. Among this enormous population, there is dramatic disparity of maternal and neonatal health, with the rate of preterm low birth weight (PLBW) ranging from 5~6% in the developed metropolises to >20% in the poor rural areas. One possible reason for the high PLBW rate is poor maternal oral health, which adversely impacts the birth outcome.

Containers 2 Clinics (C2C), in partnership with The Synergos Institute and the Namibia Ministry of Health and Social Services (NMoHSS) will pilot a regional cluster of three state-of-the-art shipping container healthcare clinics, and provide comprehensive services, including clinical, lab, pharmacy and programming for women and children.

This consortium will test a set of empowerment innovations for pregnant women through Safe Motherhood Solidarity Groups on Idjwi Island in Democratic Republic of Congo focusing on three strategic interventions: 1) Providing women with financial autonomy through the creation of community insurance programs that will enable access to all needed services for mothers and newborns in health centers, 2) enabling communities to actively design feasible, home-based maternal and neonatal assessment tools to monitor outcomes through the implementation of a participatory communication model, and 3) tr

In this decade, reproductive health voucher programs have successfully reduced maternal and infant mortality and morbidity through the innovative financing of reproductive health services.

Medical doctors and registered nurses who work with birthing mothers in rural, developing countries have had their hands tied for too long; they need better monitoring equipment and the education to use that equipment to generate data that will allow them to more effectively treat expectant mothers. The Bolivia Delivers project proposes to develop a low cost, portable maternal and fetal monitoring system that will allow rural practitioners to make decisions based on trends that occur over time in their patients’ physiological data.

A major gap exists between what is known – the evidence base for effective maternal and neonatal health (MNH) – and what is practiced, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Interventions that can effectively close this gap in these settings depend on community engagement, reliable health systems, and effective leadership. Over the past four years, the Malawian NGO, MaiKhanda, has tested ways to improve health system effectiveness for MNH.

Each year in sub-Saharan Africa 880,000 babies are stillborn and 1 million die in the first week of life. Many of these deaths are due to maternal infection with HIV, syphilis or malaria, or to maternal anaemia, which cause stillbirth, preterm birth and low birth weight, increasing the risk of neonatal death. In rural Tanzania, as in many other African countries, more than 80% of pregnant women attend antenatal clinic, but few are screened and treated for these conditions – an important missed opportunity to save newborn lives.

Women’s health in India is neglected because the public health system is not functioning properly. A recent study found that nearly 40 percent of health staff in India are absent from work on a typical day; and it gets worse in rural areas. This problem negatively affects both the way women use health facilities and their health outcomes: Only 18 percent of births take place in a public facility, and the neonatal mortality rate in India is almost 40 percent.

Well-funded, effective vaccine initiatives have developed important technologies that can positively impact other health care sectors. The challenge is to clearly identify and proactively exploit the most promising “spin-off” opportunities early on. By redirecting recent innovations in vaccine cold chain toward safe blood storage, we anticipate an immediate, life-saving impact for women experiencing obstetric emergencies. They might otherwise die from lack of available blood or from bacterial and viral infections resulting from improper storage conditions or infected donor blood.

Blood transfusions in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia are critically important. The low standard of living and malnutrition in these countries leads to high frequency of anemia, particularly in children and women. According to World Health Organization (WHO) 30 to 40% of women in sub-Saharan Africa have anemia and about 25% of postpartum deaths in women are related to obstetrical hemorrhages. While blood transfusions are essential, blood safety remains a major problem in the developing world.

We propose a simple, flexible multimedia intervention delivered via social networks to empower a rural Nigerian community to learn about and gain access to an inexpensive lifesaving intervention for the prevention of postpartum hemorrhage: misoprostol. We will create a “simple illustrated video”, an illustrated story with narrative and music, to be delivered and shared by mobile phone or via a laminated “flipbook” based on the documentary The Edge of Joy which tells the story of postpartum hemorrhage from the perspective of Nigerian women, men and healthcare providers.

In rural Kenyan communities, freelance birth attendants are often called upon to attend to a “home delivery.”  Basic issues like a general lack of sterility and hygiene instruments (clean water and a disinfected environment) greatly compromise infection control in such settings making home deliveries truly high-risk processes. Indeed, there have been increasing reports of poor handling of umbilical cord and subsequent infant infections due to use of poorly chosen instruments during delivery.

Mobile maternal health voucher programs have the potential to transform a novel incentive scheme into a cost effective and efficient way to spark an increase in the utilization of health services and to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality. Health voucher programs enable women to purchase vouchers for maternal health services at a fraction of the cost and redeem them at quality-accredited facilities, public or private. This innovative strategy has been being successfully piloted in several low-income countries.

 Almost two-thirds of neonatal deaths, and a high proportion of maternal deaths, occur within the first 7 days after delivery. It is often assumed that patients can recognize severe complications, when to seek care, and feel empowered to do so. Very often; however, this is not the case. During this high-risk period immediately after birth, mothers are often at home with no monitoring from skilled providers. Mothers can be unsure of whether certain symptoms are normal and, more importantly, often are not empowered to seek care even when experiencing a severe complication.