Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

Rudolph Gleason of Georgia Institute of Technology in the U.S. and Abebbaw Fekadu of CDT-Africa in Ethiopia will develop a low-cost, wearable device that wirelessly monitors the vital signs of neonates in low-resource settings to help lower mortality rates. In Ethiopia, and many other regions, the leading causes of neonatal deaths are respiratory distress, infection, and asphyxia.

Bioceptive aims to expand access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) for the estimated 222 million women around the world with an unmet need for modern family planning resources. The discreet intrauterine device (IUD) is one of the most applicable LARC methods for global use due to its long term of use, high efficacy, and minimal user effort. However, IUD access is frequently limited because the insertion procedure is complicated and only carried out by highly trained physicians.

DRC is witnessing a very complex and long standing humanitarian crises with about 13 mio people in dire need of assistance. With less then 1 physician/10.000 people in DRC, and even fewer in conflict areas, health facilities such as Rural Health Centers (RHC) are left without skilled staff and lack access to essential quality health care. This results, amongst others, in too many women and newborns dying during childbirth, and epidemics spreading rapidly due to poor field diagnosis.

In Peru, half of children younger than 2 years old have anemia 1,2. Anemia is associated with cognitive and psychomotor delay 3,4. In 2015, the Peruvian Ministry of Health (MINSA) implemented a micronutrient supplementation program to reduce anemia, but was unsuccessful according to recent indicators. Anemia in children is associated with poor breastfeeding habits, low intake of iron-rich foods, an absence of proper hygiene practices, and the lack of follow-up treatment by health personnel.

Anywhere when a baby is born very small, less than 2.5 kg, birth attendants need warnings to timely make decisions as refer him to the hospital. Without the critical care, the newborn survival could be neglected, as well appropriate management of the respiratory distress syndrome. Most of the lives could be saved with prompt hazard identification, but current methods remains an unsolved challenge because of the disadvantages as low accessibility and the high cost of the obstetric ultrasound

Chamas for Change addresses the inequities driving poor Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) outcomes by integrating health, social and financial literacy education with a saving/loans program to foster women's empowerment through community health volunteer (CHV)-led women's groups. Chamas introduces a core set of adult capabilities that break the intergenerational cycle of poverty and provide children with a healthy, positive environment. Our innovative solution demonstrates efficacy, acceptability and sustainability in our communities.

Data from the World Health Organization states that roughly 303,000 women and 2.7 million newborns died in 2015 due to pregnancy- and childbirth-related complications, of which 10% to 15% were directly linked to unhygienic conditions during labor and birth. PATH seek to validate the usability, acceptability, effectiveness, and cost requirements of the SE Flow device in eight district-level labor wards in Kisumu, Kenya.

2.7 Million newborns die within the 1st month and 303,000 new mothers die each year. Most deaths occur in low-income (L-I) settings as a result of severe postpartum hemorrhage (PPH), sepsis and complications of delivery, all of which can be managed with medication if promptly addressed. However, shortages of medicine is a challenge. The problem is far wider in L-I communities, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, where the fake medicine market represents a nightmare.

PATH has developed an innovative, low-cost, newborn respiratory package that includes a low-cost bubble continuous positive airway pressure (bCPAP) device that can blend air/oxygen without compressed air and without electricity. The package includes nasal prongs, a pulse oximeter, as well as training materials. The immediate goal of this project is to eliminate preventable newborn deaths in Uganda by expanding access to safe bCPAP therapy.

Preeclampsia (PE) remains one of the leading global causes of maternal death and disability. Under this proposal, we seek to incorporate a new, innovative design feature to our prototype that will further improve its usability by enabling midstream urine collection and thus align the test process to that of a common one-step, at-home pregnancy test. No current PE diagnostic test, including the current protein-only dipstick, allows for such a simple test process.