Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

Marion Jourdan of Danone Nutricia Research in the Netherlands together with Michael Zimmermann of ETH Zürich in Switzerland will test an approach to enhance iron absorption from food in children in Kenya by providing them with live food-grade bacteria to release phytate-bound iron from popular foods such as cereal flour. Phytates bind strongly to iron and inhibit its absorption. Their previous work identified different bacterial strains containing phytases that could grow in milk, degrade phytates, and release nutritionally-relevant levels of free iron in vitro.

Sana Syed of the University of Virginia in the U.S. together with Imran Nisar of Aga Khan University in Pakistan will utilize metabolic modeling of patient-derived ‘omics data from pre-existing maternal and pediatric cohorts to identify new biomarkers and therapeutic targets for environmental enteropathy (EE), which is associated with impaired childhood growth and development and vaccine responses.

Rakhi Dandona of the Public Health Foundation of India will examine gender disparities in national health programs in India by harnessing existing large-scale gender-specific data for disease burden and their risk factors from the Global Burden of Disease Study to help address gender-based health inequities in India. Males and females are affected differently by many diseases.

Preeclampsia/eclampsia (PE/E) occurs in 10% of pregnancies in Africa and accounts for at least 16% of maternal deaths in low resource countries (ref: WHO). Significant proteinuria can now be treated immediately, thus lowering the risk of admitting a patient with non-significant proteinuria into hospital/clinic with all of its associated costs.

Only 11% of Nigerian women of reproductive age (15-49 years) use a modern contraceptive method. As a result, Nigeria has an estimated 2.3 million unintended pregnancies yearly. The main cause of these unintended pregnancies and the poor contraceptive use is the lack of access to sexual and reproductive health information available to young people in Nigeria. 30% of Nigerian women aged 25-29 have experienced some form of gender-based violence since age 15. Furthermore, 3.6 million Nigerians are infected with HIV (the second largest HIV epidemic worldwide).

Post-partum hemorrhage (PPH) is the leading cause of maternal mortality worldwide. Products that address PPH are urgently needed in LMICs, however, developing a sustainable business plan around a low margin and low volume product is challenging. With this award, CMHI will validate a viable business plan for critical PPH commodities in Kenya. The Every Second Matters for Mothers and Babies - Uterine Balloon Tamponade™ (ESM-UBT) is an ultra-low cost (FDA approved) UBT package, designed to arrest uncontrolled PPH after conventional methods fail.

Alongside front-line health care workers and the Rwanda Ministry of Health, The Ihangane Project is creating Rwanda’s first point-of-care digital health record.

Our innovation combines technology and service delivery through a social enterprise model to increase access to oxygen in low-resource settings. The FREO2 Oxygen System provides inexpensive, reliable oxygen to pediatric wards for the treatment of hypoxemia. The innovation currently serves the pediatric ward at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital, Uganda, and we seek to expand access to oxygen to 20 neighboring health facilities.

The M-Mama program in the Lake Zone of Tanzania saves lives of pregnant women, as well as their newborns, by reducing delays in reaching and receiving care during an emergency. At its core, M-Mama is a technology-driven emergency transport and referral system. The 24/7 dispatch centers at health facilities provide remote triaging, and arrange transportation for patients to health facility via a community driver with a 4-wheel vehicle or ambulance.

The primary purpose of the innovation is to build social and healthcare capacities for improving reproductive health outcomes for young women in two states. Using a youth-focused communication strategy, designed and implemented by young women from the community, the innovation will build upon IDF’s efforts in the public health system of two states to increase availability of SRH services, including abortion and contraception.