Communication/Media Platform

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.

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 Outdated practices and rapid socioeconomic changes contribute to suboptimal feeding practices.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.

This innovation seeks to use mobile technology to improve the uptake of vaccines among newborns and children under 5 in developing countries. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 109 million children received three doses of the tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis vaccines in 2010, while 19.3 million children were not reached. The WHO data states that 1.7 million children under 5 die from vaccine preventable diseases due to missed appointments.

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%.

Lead exposure is a major global public health problem, especially in low-income countries where nearly 40% of children suffer (1). As a potent neurotoxin, lead irreversibly damages the brain, permanently lowers IQ and reduces lifetime earnings (2). Our proposed district-wide prevention effort will examine and test ways to comprehensively reduce lead in Bangladesh from three major sources: batteries, paint, and adulterated turmeric. We will make the invisible problem of lead contamination visible by engaging stakeholders in a process of publicly identifying and eliminating lead hotspots.

East Africa has the highest incidence and mortality from cervical cancer in the world, where the mortality rate is 50%. Screening programs have been successful in high-income countries based on pap smear testing. There exist several barriers to the uptake of screening in Kenya, namely access to a clinic, access to personnel that can interpret the samples, as well as the cultural and social barriers to cervical exams. Currently less than 4% of at-risk women in Kenya are undergoing screening. We have developed an innovative tool to make self-screening for cervical cancer possible.

Opportunities for cognitive development are unavailable to most children in India. Government programmes for children favour cure and prevention over promotive care, are not directed towards improving cognitive development, and have hinged entirely on the mother as the primary recipient of information and action. Evidence from programmes underline the importance of paternal involvement in child development in the early stages, there is little evidence on its effect in India.

The proposed innovation will provide 500 teenage girls who are pregnant and/or nursing children between the ages 0-3 years living in Mukuru Slum of Nairobi with knowledge and skills to promote their children’s brain and overall development. This will be achieved using a three-pronged approach incorporating the scientific, social and economic interventions. In addition, the project will utilise an Early Childhood Development (ECD) framework that will take teenage mothers through a process of: ECD Awareness, knowledge Acquisition, Action, Accountability, Assessment and Access to services.

This is a randomized controlled trial of prenatal and postpartum supplementation with probiotics and long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids together with psychosocial counseling to enhance child cognition at 6-months of age. The supplement consists of 10^9 CFU Bifidobacterium lactis DR 10 and 80mg long chain PUFA to pregnant and lactating mothers to ameliorate gut microbiota and cognitive development of their children.

Newborns who are considered high-risk, particularly those born preterm, low birth weight (LBW), or who develop illnesses early in life, often face significant nutrition and/or developmental challenges. While more high-risk infants are now surviving thanks in part to the increasing development of neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), very few follow-up programmes exist to ensure these infants receive the on-going care needed upon discharge from hospital.