Educational Program

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.

Improving safety of infusion is a neglected component of child health in humanitarian contexts. Data from the FEAST trial estimates that over 10% of children admitted to East African hospitals are in shock and require immediate infusion therapy. Approximately 11-12% of these children die, often within hours of admission. Existing infusion sets on the Ugandan market are imported and cost between 2500-6000 USD, making them incredibly expensive to procure and maintain.

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.

In sub-Saharan Africa, healthcare delivery for HIV developed almost exclusively through vertical infrastructures. Research has found families affected by HIV face numerous challenges not addressed by current vertical structures, which alone struggle to promote ART adherence. Food security, income, family functioning, and social support among HIV+ caregivers, and higher levels of abuse, neglect, school dropout and street-migration among children in HIV-affected families threaten family well-being.

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.

In Myanmar, 200 mothers die per 100,000 live births and 62 children die per 1,000 live births before the age of 5. These are the worst rates in the region. Maternal anaemia, jaundice, and beriberi comprise most of the deaths, which are preventable through greater access to information and health facilities -- only one-third of deliveries are facility-based. Our idea is to scale up our maymay app (www.koekoetech.com/maymay) nationwide and add telemedicine, appointments scheduling, and more content.

Diagnosis of malaria in pregnancy is inadequate. Current testing modalities lack the sensitivity to detect low level infections in expectant mothers. The National Strategy to eliminate malaria in Ethiopia and other sub-Saharan countries in the next 10 years will demand highly sensitive diagnostics in patients with such low level infections. Our group has validated a DNA based test for malaria called "LAMP" and shown 30% greater detection of malaria in some cases. In pregnant mothers, LAMP detects close to 4% more cases than microscopy in a pilot study.

HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age (15-44) in the world, challenging efforts to reduce maternal mortality rates. The situation is worse in Africa slums and rural areas. Many women learn their HIV status through antenatal and childbirth services. But only 10% of women in the Kibera slums (Nairobi) receive antenatal care. ChildsLife and Last Mile4D will integrate mobile technologies and maternal services to improve access to care among HIV positive women and girls using mobikits; solar-powered mobile natal kits.

Hope Through Health (HTH) has developed a service delivery innovation that is transforming public healthcare systems in underserved nations like Togo. HTH’s approach implements a bold new service delivery model in partnership with the Togolese Ministry of Health (MOH) to strengthen primary health care (PHC) across RMNCH including family planning (FP). On the community-level, this model will build demand, by training and equipping local women as community health workers to effectively educate and enroll women into potentially life changing FP programs.

By 2016, Uganda hosted 500,000 persons displaced by conflict. Of these, 83,000 live in Kampala, 51% are female aged 15-49 years old women were disproportionately affected. Kampala’s urban refugees live in slums of Katwe, Makindye and Masajja. Urban refugees have poor access to Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH), and Family Planning (FP) services, due to transportation, education, culture and language barriers within a weak health system, not tailored to deliver SRH, and FP services.