Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

C’est la vie! est une initiative de communication pour le développement portant sur la santé maternelle et infantile, la santé de la reproduction, la qualité des soins et les violences de genre. Elle se compose : 1. d’un feuilleton télévisé d’éducation par le divertissement diffusé en français et an anglais dans plus de 40 pays africain par plusieurs dizaines de chaines de télévision publiques et privées. 2. d’une campagne cross média déclinée aux échelles nationales et locales sur les radios, les médias sociaux, Internet et au travers d’actions de communication communautaire ciblées.

The project will involve a community health service focusing on reducing neonatal and under 5 mortality and morbidity rates. It will build on a collaboration with 501 Village Health Team members (VHTs) to improve awareness and demand for healthcare services in the catchment area. The VHTs are key in linking the community to health facilities. We propose to enhance these linkages by forming an electronic messaging platform where households are able to remotely and directly consult health workers and VHTs using phone SMS.

Birth asphyxia causes up to 1.8 million newborn deaths and stillbirths every year. This global tragedy can be prevented by effectively Helping Babies Breathe at the time of birth. Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) has been shown to reduce newborn mortality by up to 47%. Such mortality impact is however not sustained due to rapid skills deterioration. We propose to improve sustainability of HBB’s impact by increasing skills retention with an innovative mobile application called HBB Prompt.

Unintended pregnancies often lead to high levels of unplanned births, unsafe abortions, maternal injuries and death. Reducing unintended pregnancies could prevent 1/4 to 1/3 of maternal deaths and the use of modern contraception is recommended. Our bold idea is to develop a family planning benefits card program (FPBCP) as an incentive system to increase uptake of family planning services among the urban poor men and women aged 15 to 49 years. This program is intended to enable the urban poor to prevent incidences of unintended pregnancies.

There are some serious congenital abnormalities and inborn errors of metabolism that leads to disability and death of an infant. Some of these conditions have effective treatment or management if detected early. By the time the symptoms are manifested it is often too late and causes severe physical and mental disability in what could have been a completely normal child.Hence it is imperative in diagnosing these disorders at the earliest. In the developed countries all the newborn babies are screened for these conditions through a newborn screening programme (NBS).

Phototherapy is a pediatrics medical device used to treat jaundice in neonates. Jaundice is yellowish skin in neonates. Neonatal jaundice occurs in at least 60% of term infants around the world. It needs phototherapy for treatment. If it is untreated by phototherapy light, it can cause irreversible brain damage and other infections. Due to lack of phototherapy units many neonates are exposed to aforementioned health problems and death.In remote areas health facilities with thousands of deliveries there is lack of and absence of this machine.

In Lima, Peru a high proportion of pregnant women suffer from poor nutrition and its consequences, including anemia, gestational diabetes, and neural tube defects in their infants. The Ministry of Health (MoH) has made reducing maternal anemia a national priority.We propose Project Sáname a community-based prenatal care initiative that integrates nutrition education, social support, income generation, and collaboration with the MoH to improve outcomes related to nutrition during pregnancy.

We propose a system-intervention targeting the critical but neglected process of ‘transport’ of critically ill neonates and infants from basic units to tertiary care centers. Neonatal & infant mortality rates remain high in LMIC. Advanced neonatal ICUs and surgical facilities are few and far-between. Access is further limited by distances, late referrals, poor communication, & logistics of transport, besides financial compulsions. Conditions requiring transport range from basic neonatal problems e.g. prematurity and sepsis, to life threatening congenital lesions (e.g.

Indonesia faces a double burden of maternal and child malnutrition, with high rates of under and over nutrition. As of 2014, 12% of children suffer from wasting while 12% are overweight. Outdated practices and rapid socioeconomic changes contribute to suboptimal feeding practices. Meanwhile, healthcare workers and mothers are time and resource constrained, limiting the efficiency of existing interventions.

Malnutrition is a big problem in Lake Victoria region of Kenya. Nonetheless, there is a nutritious freshwater sardine called Omena which comprises 44% of total catch of fish from the Lake but poor drying leads to huge wastage, lowering food value and incomes. Dried form of this fish has 3 to 6 months shelf life, and can be sold in small portions to meet needs of the rural poor both nutritionally and commercially. Increasing the availability of dried fish in the remote rural areas would help alleviate malnutrition.