Product/Service Development

Development Data is seeking funding to achieve sustainable impact at scale for an evidence-based and innovative severe malaria intervention. Building on a one-year pilot project, the next phase of MAMaZ Against Malaria (MAM) will support the Government of Zambia to scale up a solution that will reduce preventable mortality and morbidity from severe malaria among children aged six months to six years.

The innovation that Triggerise India will use to improve sexual, reproductive, and maternal health outcomes among adolescent girls and young women ages 15-24 in India is a motivation platform. Our platform includes two types of infrastructure: technology (people use websites, apps, SMS, and membership cards to engage with our platform) and partners (Triggerise India links service providers, mobilizers, content creators, retailers, and product distributors to provide key offerings).

Stunting (being too short for one’s age) is caused by poor nutrition and chronic infection. 40% of Bangladeshi children are stunted. The Max Healthy Village Program's local NGO training model mobilizes rural communities to improve water, sanitation, nutrition and safe motherhood to reduce stunting and fecal- and water-borne diseases in children under-5, giving them a healthy start in life.

Healthy Entrepreneurs (HE) deploys a last-mile distribution model to deliver affordable and reliable health products and services to the poorest women and children living in rural areas via a network of trained micro-entrepreneurs. HE’s basket of goods targets the health of children under-5 with products like anti-malaria medications, zinc and oral rehydration salts, as well as addresses the SRHR for females, with items such as sanitary pads, condoms and contraception.

Through a partnership with Grand Challenges Canada, LifeNet will deploy its MNH (Maternal and Newborn Health) Package at 30 Ugandan health facilities while Duke Global Health Institute measures health outcomes, positioning the MNH Package for sustainable funding and preparing it to scale throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Supplemental COVID-19 funding will support COVID-19-related education, enhanced infection control measures and PPE for staff to enable continued treatment of patients in the context of the pandemic.

Thomas Weiser of the Lifebox Foundation in the U.S. will implement their surgical infection prevention program, Clean Cut, in ten maternity hospitals in Ethiopia to reduce infections and other complications of C-sections, which account for around 15% of maternal deaths. To improve the safety of surgery, they developed Clean Cut, which uses training and improved management practices to promote compliance with six key safety standards including sterility of instruments and surgical sites, gowns and gloves, and appropriate use of antibiotics.

Jeffrey Lee of the University of Toronto in Canada will engineer single-domain camelid antibodies (nanobodies) to block the interaction between two proteins exclusive to the sperm and egg that mediate their fusion and thereby fertilization, as affordable, non-hormonal contraceptives with fewer side effects. Nanobodies are exquisitely specific binding proteins that make attractive therapeutics because of their additional simplicity, stability, and smaller size compared to antibodies, also lowering the cost of their production.

Darryl Russell of the University of Adelaide in Australia will use genomics approaches to identify the molecular pathways that control ovulation for developing more non-hormonal contraceptives with fewer side effects. The classical progestin-based contraceptive pill disrupts natural hormone cycles; requires long-term, regular use; and causes a range of harmful side-effects. An alternative approach is an acute treatment that directly blocks ovulation – the release of the oocyte from the ovary.

Leo Han of Oregon Health and Science University in the U.S. and colleagues at the University of North Carolina and the Marsico Lung Institute will build a hydration-based drug discovery platform for the cervix to screen drug libraries for long-lasting non-hormonal contraceptives that alter mucus hydration. Contraceptives that thicken cervical mucus to block the movement of sperm and thereby inhibit fertility would be well tolerated and may also protect against pathogens.

Tanya Doherty of the South African Medical Research Council will assess different contracting models for the National Health Insurance, which has been charged with providing universal health services purchased from both the public and private sectors across South Africa, to ensure that cesarean sections are only performed when appropriate and safe.