Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

Diagnostics For All will develop a sensitive, low-cost, rapid, paper-based microfluidic diagnostic test to screen pregnant women for anemia, HIV, HBV, and syphilis, from one drop of blood. This antenatal care (ANC) test panel will ensure that women who attend ANC at least once are tested for the most critical diseases and provided results on the spot.  This ANC panel could improve maternal and child health outcomes for up to 31 million pregnant women in the developing world and their children.

QFS builds off a proprietary microencapsulation technology to quadruple the fortification of salt with iron, folic acid, B12 and iodine. QFS' design is based on the proven premise that the deficiencies of iodine, iron, folic acid and vitamin B12 pose a significant health risk, and that deficiencies of these specific micronutrients are especially harmful to women of childbearing age, and are a major contributing factor to both maternal and infant mortality and morbidity.

In 2015, an estimated 2.7 million newborn deaths occurred worldwide, accounting for 45% of all deaths among children under 5 years. To improve newborn survival, the scale-up of interventions that are effective at reducing neonatal death is crucial.

This model leverages women's social networks to extend supply chain at the last mile in delivery of enhanced complementary foods to mothers of children aged 6-24 months. Bulky enhanced commercially available complementary food is hygienically re-packaged to small quantities, and sold door to door by trained women entrepreneurs. The women entrepreneurs train mothers on proper food nutrition and age-appropriate complementary foods.

Our goal is to engineer thermostable microneedle (MN) patches to deliver tetanus vaccine. Instead of expecting pregnant women from remote areas to travel far for vaccination, we propose to provide microneedle patches designed to be applied to skin like a skin plaster. Their small size, and lack of vaccine reconstitution, improves on standard practice. MNs are formulated to dissolve releasing the vaccine quickly, with no biohazard sharp waste.

Worldwide, 225 million women have unmet contraceptive needs. Contraceptive implants are increasing in popularity; however, uptake is slowed because most Community Healthcare Workers (CHWs) cannot administer implants. The SubQ Assist is designed to facilitate this task-shifting by ensuring a safe and accurate administration after almost no training, dramatically changing the availability of implants to underserved women.

Very young adolescents in Madagascar need enhanced access to comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) before and during puberty to prepare against threats of sexual coercion and violence, unintended pregnancy, and childhood marriage. The Malagasy adolescent birth rate is 145, as compared to 95 for neighboring nations, meaning that one in three Malagasy girls will become a mother before she is 18 years old. The prevalence of child marriage is also one of the highest in the region, at 48%.

Our idea is to develop BiliSpec, a bilirubin monitoring device with a per-test cost of less than $0.10. BiliSpec includes: (1) a lateral-flow device to separate serum from whole blood in under 30 seconds and (2) a battery powered reader to measure light transmission through the separated serum on the strip and display the bilirubin concentration. We estimate our device could prevent the deaths of approximately ninety-thousand neonates who die every year due to lack of access to effective treatment and monitoring for neonatal jaundice in low-resource settings.

Jacaranda Health's mission is to transform maternal healthcare in East Africa with high-quality, low-cost, and respectful maternity services. Jacaranda owns a maternity hospital in peri-urban Nairobi where we develop innovations in service delivery and demand-side interventions to improve access to care. We also partner with public hospitals to adapt and replicate those innovations so that they can improve quality of care for mothers in the public sector.

Quality crèches at worksites for children of working mothers- migrant, exploited and overburdened, at settings where almost nothing exists is the innovation. In informal survey, Mobile Creches understands that in best conditions a room with an untrained child minder is provided at worksites. Nutrition, health is below the national statistics. Employers shift responsibility of childcare to govt ICDS centres that are either non functional or rudimentary.