Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

Abram Muse from Sefako Makgatho University in South Africa together with collaborators from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA and the University of the North West in South Africa will identify biomarkers that can be used to develop a sensitive and low-cost blood test for diagnosing gestational diabetes. If left untreated, gestational diabetes can have severe consequences for mother and child. It is currently diagnosed by an expensive and time-consuming glucose tolerance test, which involves taking blood multiple times, and is often not available in low-resource settings.

Denise Evans from Wits Health Consortium (Pty) Limited in South Africa in collaboration with Peter Rockers from Boston University will evaluate the impact and sustainability of a combined health care package for families offered by community health workers in the home to improve child health in South Africa.

Louis Roux from LifeAssay Diagnostics (Pty) Ltd. in South Africa, in collaboration with PATH, will develop an easy-to-use, low-cost, strip test for pregnant women in developing countries to detect the onset of proteinuria, which indicates a highly increased risk of preeclampsia/eclampsia. Preeclampsia/eclampsia is a major cause of maternal death, particularly in developing countries. Onset is rapid, and so early diagnosis is crucial, particularly in remote communities where health care is not immediately available.

Debjani Paul, Ninad Mehendale and Ammar Jagirdar from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in India will develop a simple system to detect sickle cell disease for use by untrained individuals in tribal populations in India in order to reduce infant mortality rates. Current diagnostics require expensive equipment and trained personnel, and are often inaccessible to the rural populations most in need.

Avijit Bansal and Ayesha Chaudhary of Windmill Health Technologies in India will develop an easy-to-use device to enable front-line health workers to more successfully resuscitate newborns. The current bag and mask device is inefficient and requires two trained personnel who are often not available. They have designed a foot operated manual resuscitator that also reports real-time performance, and requires only one trained operator. They will measure performance parameters of the prototype to generate evidence to support progress into clinical trials.

Ashish Ganguly and colleagues from the CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology in India will make an affordable paper-based diagnostic to quickly and precisely measure plasma gelsolin levels in expectant mothers to help predict premature delivery and postpartum recovery, thereby reducing new mother and child mortality rates. They will determine the value of plasma gelsolin levels for predicting postpartum-related problems using patient sampling and an animal model of preterm birth.

Caroline Ochieng of the Stockholm Environment Institute in Sweden is evaluating an approach to stimulate women in Kenya to regularly visit health clinics during pregnancy and after birth to improve maternal health. Currently, the majority visits only once, and infant and maternal mortality are high. To encourage the women to keep additional appointments they will give them a health credit voucher that can be exchanged for a specific cash amount or retained for a subsequent appointment, for up to four appointments, when they receive another voucher worth twice as much.

George Wehby and colleagues at the University of Iowa in the U.S. will evaluate newborn metabolic biomarkers for their ability to predict gestational age, and identify associations between them and long-term academic achievement. They will analyze existing newborn metabolic profiles and academic tests from almost one million children in Iowa born between 1980 and 2006 to identify the most predictive biomarkers. In the future they will expand their method to developing countries to help estimate gestational age and identify newborns at risk of neurodevelopmental defects.

Andrew Prentice of the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom will conduct a phase II clinical trial to test the ability of a unique nano iron compound to safely and more effectively treat iron-deficiency anemia in children. Iron-deficiency anemia is a common condition particularly in women and children in resource-poor settings and can be deadly. Current iron supplements have limited effects in these settings and undesirable side effects including increasing the risk of infectious diarrhea in children which causes severe morbidity and mortality.

Saiqa Mullick of Wits Reproductive Health & HIV Research Institute (RHI) in South Africa, along with Grass Root Soccer (GRS), Sonke Gender Justice, and the Population Council, will empower adolescent girls in South African townships as they progress in education by increasing their educational, health, social, and economic assets, while at the same time shifting gender attitudes and encouraging positive behavior among adolescent boys.