Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

Tiny Totos is building a network of affordable, stimulating and safe daycares in slums by training informal entrepreneurs to provide better care for under-3s. Our coaching programmes have succeeded in teaching applied business skills, to create financially independent, standard-setting daycares improving children's health and developmental indicators. We however recognize that to sustain improvements in children's' lives, improved practices must be reinforced at home.

Globally, 289,000 maternal deaths occur each year; 9% are due to obstructed labour (OL). OL also contributes to 2.6 million annual stillbirths and 2.7 million newborn deaths. Improved intrapartum care with use of the partograph, a graph based tool to prevent OL, could avert these outcomes. Yet globally it remains underutilized. Contributing factors include: limited graphing skills and lack of an organizational culture that supports its use.

During intrapartum period, world faces 1.2 million intrapartum stillbirths and 2,25,000 maternal deaths every year. India alone accounts for around 130 maternal deaths everyday. More than 80% deliveries occur with the assistance of midwives in low resource healthcare settings in India. WHO Partograph is designed to monitor and make timely interventions to prevent complications during the intrapartum period. During this period, labor vitals recording and interpretations from the partograph are virtually absent.

Low uptake of postnatal care and family planning (FP) are significant factors to poor health outcomes for mothers and babies in Kenya. To address this, we develop innovations that improve the quality of care that we test in our own maternity clinics and replicate in public hospitals. One innovation that showed strong evidence in early iterations is a Postpartum Checklist delivered via phone call, which created dramatic results in health-seeking behavior: an increase in maternal care-seeking by 40% and in FP use by 90%.

Teenage pregnancy in Sierra Leone (SL) is as high as 28% and is often caused by sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), transactional sex or early marriage. Half of all female teenage deaths are pregnancy related. Pregnant teens and newborns are susceptible to poor health - both physical and mental. Pregnant teens in this post-conflict and post-Ebola country face severe stigma that is condoned and perpetrated by their communities.

Spirulina is a nutrient-rich algae providing far more protein per gram than meats or plant sources, all essential amino acids, high iron, and vitamins A, B12, and K. Here, it is sold as a high-end nutritional supplement. We aim to bring Spirulina's nutritional benefits inexpensively to children in the Philippines, who need what it provides: nearly half of Filipino households fail to reach desired daily protein consumption levels, and 35% of children under 5 suffer from anemia.

The solution is using digital pen and paper [DPP] technology for clinic and hospital data collection. It has been used in transport and logistics industry where clients and users are widely dispersed, as well as health industry with a distributed services structure. With a digital pen and paper system, data is captured on a digital data capture form using a digital pen. For the user, the process is no different from normal ‘form filling’. The pen then sends the data in its digital format via cell phone or internet to central a server, where it can be accessed via computer.

The project is designed to address the problem of chronic under nutrition by delivering sustainable and scalable cross-sectoral solutions to transform the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable communities in Banswara, South Rajasthan. One key aspect of the project involves exploring new ways to promote coordination between multi sectoral aspects i.e. agriculture, nutrition, women empowerment, enterprise development and community development.

Improving contraceptive demand and use is a top priority identified in Pakistan’s national health plan. There are socioeconomic inequities in family planning coverage in Pakistan (1). Lack of interventions for the urban poor is a global research gap (2).

The top most recommendation by the panel of experts at the Copenhagen Consensus 2012 was "micronutrient intervention" to have the most leverage to make an impact under budget restrained conditions. Almost 2 billion people around the world suffer from iron deficiency (ID), or its more severe form iron deficiency anemia (IDA). ID affects the health and productivity of all, the most vulnerable being young children, adolescent girls and young women in the childbearing age.