Lorin Kavanaugh-Ulku is Sr. International Development Consultant at DAI. Lode Roels is Press Officer at Grand Challenges Canada. What does a garage mechanic from Argentina, a team of innovators from University of British Columbia, and a group of doctors in Kenya have in common? They are all pushing the boundaries of innovation to save the lives of women and newborns […]
Dr. Bryn Sobott completed his PhD in Experimental Particle Physics in 2010 and received the Bragg Medal nomination for best thesis from the University of Melbourne. He has successfully designed and executed experiments at the SSRL (Stanford), SLS (Zurich), Max-Lab (Lund) and the Australian Synchrotron (Melbourne). His FREO2 project was awarded seed funding in the […]
Imran Manji is a Clinical Pharmacist at USAID-AMPATH and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Purdue University College of Pharmacy. Based in Eldoret, Kenya, he graduated from the University of Nairobi in 2006 and joined the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, one of the partner institutions of AMPATH, in 2008. He oversees the pharmacy activities […]
Dr. Benson Wamalwa is a research scientist at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. He is the recipient of a Grand Challenges Canada seed grant in the Stars in Global Health program. In rural Kenyan communities, many mothers are unable to have their children fully immunized. The remoteness of their homes means that reaching the […]
Dr Rempel is Associate Professor of Nursing at Brock University and co-principal investigator of the Saving Brains project “Father’s Involvement: Saving Brains in Vietnam.” Her research focuses on health behaviour decision-making and the development and evaluation of health promotion interventions. It’s early evening in a village in Vietnam. Over the community loudspeaker out on the street, […]
It’s summer again and that means that Grand Challenges Canada is welcoming a new batch of summer students. We have a diverse group of nine students this year, with various academic and professional backgrounds. For this blog post, each student was asked to ponder two questions: Why Grand Challenges Canada? & What do you hope to achieve over the summer?
Maternal health is a global responsibility and it begins with a woman’s local community. In the medical literature, maternal health has been confined to a woman’s clinical characteristics like her age, weight, ethnicity and medical conditions. While these are important for her overall health and prognosis in pregnancy, the broader context that she lives in is just as critical.
Mother’s Day, celebrated internationally, reminds us of the inestimable social contribution that women make to the world as they care for their fetuses, newborns, infants and young children. Most mothers are living in the world’s resource constrained low- and lower-middle income countries. Many are experiencing crowded housing; lack of access to healthcare, clean water and sanitation; food insecurity and exposure to gender-based violence while caring for their children.
Ruth (*) came to a Jacaranda Health three days ago to deliver her healthy baby girl. When it was time to leave the hospital, Jacaranda nurses counseled Ruth- as they do for all of our mothers – to make sure she and her newborn had the best opportunity to stay healthy once they returned home in Kasarani, just outside Nairobi.
On World Malaria Day I would like to celebrate the successes of the global efforts to control and eliminate malaria that have significantly reduced malaria mortality worldwide. I would also like to note that despite all these great efforts, well over half a million people, mostly children under the age of 5, died of the disease last year. This is an unacceptably high number.