Mama River: A maternal and newborn health program for remote communities in the Peruvian Amazon

Traditionally, hard-to-reach rural areas show increased maternal and child mortality. In Peru, rural villages of the Amazon basin have the worst health indicators in the country and many are only accessible by medical river vessels. The under-five and maternal mortality rates are well above the national average. The Mama River Program, a maternal and newborn program for remote riverine areas in the Peruvian Amazon, wants to change this. The program will train traditional midwives to use smartphones (widely available in Peru) to collect information from pregnant women in their communities and schedule antenatal care visits by the medical ship staff. It will alert the medical vessel whenever a high-risk pregnancy is identified, and send reports when a birth or death occurs, making civil registration and administrative follow-up more effective. This project is funded under a collaborative agreement between CONCYTEC (Peru’s National Council for Science, Technology and Technological Innovation) and Grand Challenges Canada (funded by the Government of Canada) to support Stars in Global Health innovators based in Peru.