Product/Service Development

In Lebanon, approximately 20% of youth experience emotional distress and negative coping. Many of these children live in remote informal tented settlements, making integration into mainstream communities challenging. Children face financial constraints, child labor, early marriage, limited mobility, security threats, discrimination and a lack of social support.

The mental health situation of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon is critical. The Ministry of Health affirms the suicide rate in the indigenous department of Vaupés (12,2), is twice the national rate (5,07). This results from structural factors: historical trauma, loss of territory, violence, discrimination, economic precariousness and the breakdown of political, religious and social institutions. Youth migration into cities has led to acculturation, generating ruptures with cultural roots.

Evrard Nahimana of Partners in Health in Rwanda will test the delivery of a peer-support model using Expert Mothers for the provision of nurturing care to small and sick newborns in 2 district hospitals in Rwanda through a quasi-experimental pre-post design. Efforts to reduce neonatal mortality have included the expansion of care for small and sick newborns, which has the potential to save 1.9 million newborn lives. However, less attention has been paid to increases in developmental disability that occur as children survive the neonatal period with significant morbidity.

Assumpta Nantume of Neopenda in Uganda examines the clinical impact and cost-effectiveness of a wearable vital signs monitoring system, neoGuard, for critically ill newborns in Kenya where the newborn mortality rate is one of the highest in the world.

Anita Ghansah, Senior Research Fellow at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research at the University of Ghana, will build a cost-efficient malaria molecular surveillance system with high spatial and temporal resolution that covers the entire country. Dr. Ghansah is an internationally-trained genetic epidemiologist. Recognizing the power of genomics and bioinformatics approaches for bolstering malaria surveillance in Ghana, she has been a pioneer of bioinformatics training in the country.

Ify Aniebo, Senior Research Scientist and Principal Investigator at the Health Strategy and Delivery Foundation in Nigeria, will integrate molecular and genomics data for tracking drug resistance and disease transmission to strengthen malaria elimination efforts in Nigeria, which has one of the highest global burdens. Dr. Aniebo is a molecular geneticist working on malaria drug resistance, and is acknowledged as one of her country’s top young health leaders. She is also devoted to empowering the next generation of African females into the sciences.

Isabella Oyier, Associate Professor and Head of Bioscience at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya, will establish a national malaria molecular surveillance platform that is integrated into the Division of National Malaria Programme (DNMP) to directly translate research into policy. The malaria burden in Africa is no longer declining due to the emergence of new variants that are undetectable by standard diagnostics and resistant to the frontline antimalarial drug. Dr. Oyier, a leader in malaria molecular epidemiology, is committed to eradicating malaria in Africa.

Jesse Gitaka of Mount Kenya University in Kenya in collaboration with David Anderson of Burnet Institute in Australia, will develop a diagnostic device for iron deficiency anemia that is suitable for resource-limited settings. Iron deficiency anemia can cause maternal death, prematurity and stunting. Current diagnostic tests require expensive equipment or are not specific enough to distinguish between the different causes of anemia. They will develop a device that detects the low levels of hemoglobin found in immature red blood cells, called reticulocytes.

Khurshid Talukder from the Centre for Woman and Child Health in Bangladesh will scale-up their proven approach using a package of 11 service interventions, including antenatal counselling and supportive care during labor, to reduce the cesarean section rate across Bangladesh. Bangladesh has an unnecessarily high cesarean section rate, which can have severe short and long-term health consequences for the mother and child. They developed a multi-service intervention to reduce the rate in their own hospital from 65% to 42% over two years.

Martha Cecilia Suárez-Mutis of Fiocruz in Brazil will develop a molecular surveillance tool with genome sequencing to monitor the entry and subsequent spread of drug-resistant Plasmodium falciparum, the malaria-causing parasite, from across the country’s borders. Elimination of malaria requires close monitoring of the parasite population to track the emergence and spread of new genetic variants, particularly those resistant to the commonly used anti-malarial drugs, which will severely restrict elimination efforts.