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“Kangaroo Mother Care” is a cost-effective intervention known to save and improve the lives of low-birth-weight and pre-term infants.More than 20 million low-birth-weight infants are born each year, 96% of them in less-developed countries, according to the World Health Organization. Low birth weight is a major contributor to infant mortality, accounting for up to 80 percent of all neonatal deaths. It is associated with increased morbidity, as well as a higher risk of impaired cognitive development.Low-birth-weight infants generally require extra…of Kangaroo Mother Care and helps the infants not only to survive, but to thrive.A Cochrane review of 16 randomized control trials concluded that Kangaroo Mother Care significantly reduces mortality, infection and hypothermia rates, as well as the number of days in hospital when compared to conventional care. The technique has also been shown to…enable both countries to further disseminate quality Kangaroo Mother Care throughout their health facilities.The Kangaroo Foundation is based in Colombia and is a global leader in the promotion of Kangaroo Mother Care. The organization has made significant contributions to the body of research supporting Kangaroo Mother Care and has trained over 60 teams from over…

Issue In 2010, 56,000 women in India died during or shortly after their pregnancies, accounting for 20% of maternal deaths globally. The World Health Organization (WHO) promotes use of the partograph, a paper labour management tool that can halve the rate of prolonged labour and postpartum infection, and prevent obstructed labour. Despite the partograph’s value, many healthcare providers find this paper tool to be complex, requiring unrealistic amounts of training. Efforts to update the partograph have been limited. Solution The team developed an electronic mobile partograph that addresses the challenges of…that ‘patient neglect decreased’ thanks to mLabour. The physical size of the tablet made it easy for nurses to carry the app with them between beds, a significant improvement over the large, heavy, paper registries. This gave nurses more time for direct patient care, enabling them to take better care of the women in labour.…the team will work to validate the tool across multiple contexts in India, focusing primarily on rural and public healthcare facilities. Funding is being sought to scale up the project and the team can produce letters of support from many organizations stating their interest in deploying mLabour, including John Snow International, Save the Children, EngenderHealth,…

Issue Access to affordable and quality drugs remains an important global issue and, in the Philippines, such medication remains limited. Several measures have been adopted by the Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to address this, but the retail mark-up of drugs remains consistently high (up to 335%) across the country. Solution The Pharmaceutical Transparency through Technology project was developed to show that, by making pharmaceutical information…pre-test respondents said the app helped them access essential drugs. The Philippine Department of Health’s Health Regulations Division recognized the value of LUNAS and has indicated plans for national adoption of the technology. To this end, a technical working group was formed to harmonize LUNAS with the FDA systems for drug price monitoring. The project…

Issue Man-made and environmentally derived toxins cause acute and chronic illness and death to millions of humans and animals in Africa. Environmental toxins, such as aflatoxins and heavy metals, contaminate food and can lead to neurological problems in infants. Since 2004, about 477 cases of aflatoxin poisoning associated with eating contaminated maize have been documented…The basis of the new work was that the GR-1 strain and one recovered from fermented millet in Kenya (strain NN20) could bind to aflatoxin.The first  objective was to set up a community kitchen in rural Kenya near Embu, where aflatoxin poisoning is known, and to test whether ingestion of probiotic yogurt containing GR-1 and NN20 could reduce aflatoxin uptake in school children known to be exposed, despite warnings to avoid the contaminated maize. Each participant received 200ml of this probiotic yogurt for 14 days in a calibrated cup every morning, and samples of blood and urine were collected for aflatoxin analysis. Samples of maize from the source used by families were also collected and tested for aflatoxin. The second objective was to design and create a sachet that contains a dried Streptococcus thermophilus bacterium that effectively ferments milk, and the complementary probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus GR-1 strain. This is a critical…

Issue In Nairobi's slums, children live in desperate conditions, walking a fragile path to an uncertain future. An estimated 70% of families are headed by single mothers who must go out to work to support their families and, with no state daycares, they have few options:  leave their children in ad-hoc arrangements with neighbours; leave them with unregulated and often neglectful informal daycare providers; or lock the children up at home. Without adequate support services, slum children end up suffering all range of abuse and neglect, develop socio-psychological problems and stress, and often fail to meet…as health and nutrition, first aid, fire safety and motivation. Tiny Totos also experimented with starting up daycares from scratch, by conducting two entrepreneur bootcamp training programs for 30 women focusing on management, accounting, leadership, self-care, data management and marketing. A total of 23 participants pitched for investment to establish daycares and the team selected…

…More than one billion people worldwide have a disability that can impact how they sit, move, work and communicate. Solution The overall aim of this project is to produce and distribute adaptively designed objects and furniture, created from accessible resources (such as cardboard, PVC tubing and rebar), in order to help children with disabilities thrive and meaningfully contribute to society.…maintained and staffed the Diseñando Para El Futuro lab in Cochabamba, Bolivia, enabling outreach to families, local institutional administrators, educators and caregivers working with disabled children. Schools for disabled children, orphanages and therapy centres located in the city and in surrounding communities participated and continue to participate in the project. For the pilot project in…main outcomes of this pilot project included the development of actual objects, design strategies, new knowledge and shared experience. These outcomes will assist the team to scale up the Adaptive Design International pilot to an online global knowledge mobilization platform for sharing custom adaptations around the world, under the banner Diseñando Para El Futuro (Design…

Issue In developing countries, more than 200 million children aged five years or under fail to reach their developmental and cognitive potential. Early identification of children at risk for developing neurodevelopmental impairments, and timely and locally relevant interventions – both behavioural and therapeutic – can prevent and mitigate impairments, but scalable public health solutions remain a…led to interventions, assessment-linked intervention is an effective model that also facilitates behaviour change at the family level. Six community-based workers trained on developmental assessment of babies up to 18 months, as well as behavioural assessment and counseling of families, conducted the assessment of 224 babies using the app. They successfully identified children at risk…

Issue Uganda’s maternal mortality rate is high at 435 deaths per 100,000 live births. There is a close relationship between poverty and poor health indicators, pointing to the need to reach the low-income populations with innovative solutions. Outcome Implemented in Uganda, the project had three key intervention areas: Birth preparedness, including mobilizing women to save…women into groups of 10 to form the “Star Parent mother clubs”. These groups met on a weekly basis to dialogue on issues of pregnancy and care for the newborn children after birth, and to save towards delivery. The second activity involved sending pregnant women text messages educating them about taking care of themselves and…used to track group deposits and relay the message to the vendor who would deliver the service. In the case of transport, once the mother had saved up all the money she was required to save towards transport, she would get a voucher, which she would give to the transporter; this would later be used to claim for payment. The third strategy was that of home-based care, which included promoting practices of care for the umbilical cord for the newborn, keeping the baby warm, maintaining hygiene for the mother and the baby, and increasing male involvement. Village Health Teams were trained to conduct home visits, alerting women specifically on danger signs for the mother and the baby during and after delivery, and referring women in need to health facilities. The project aimed at reaching 7,500 people, including 1,500…

Issue Globally, about 2.5 billion people lack access to decent sanitation, leading to avoidable illness and death. India accounts for over 600 million people who lack toilets and practice open defecation. The majority of these are in rural areas, where adoption of conventional pit latrines has been low. A new solution is needed that is …commercialize the Tiger toilet, which uses composting worms (the tiger worm) to degrade fecal solids, combined with filtration to treat the liquid effluent. The Tiger toilet takes up half the space of a twin pit latrine, is more effective in treating fecal waste, will need less frequent emptying and is low cost. It is linked…that it would be eligible for subsidy that is provided to enable low-income families to purchase toilets. They then made an initial market entry, by direct sales promotion at the village level to test demand, which resulted in an order for about 100 toilets. Subsequently, the team has continued to make direct sales to villages…

New investments from public and private sources in Canada and the United States of America, including Grand Challenges Canada and Google.org, will enable two Canadian organizations to contribute to a better life for people with hearing loss in developing countries. Canadian not-for-profit World Wide Hearing Foundation International (World Wide Hearing) will develop a hearing loss diagnostic kit for use by…in under an hour -- shaving two weeks from the usual time required.  And, by eliminating middlemen, the cost of a hearing aid can be reduced by up to 90%. The success of the pilot project will now be taken to scale in Latin America, where Hearing Access World will use the proven, innovative approach…