From: News Release – African Press Organization (APO)
PRESS RELEASE
Local ideas shaping national health agendas to reduce child deaths in developing countries
GSK and Save the Children $1 million Healthcare Innovation Award continues to call for life-saving ideas for newborns and under-fives
LONDON, United-Kingdom, August 12, 2014/ — GSK (http://www.gsk.com) and Save the Children continue to call for applications for their 2014 $1 million Healthcare Innovation Award, as previous winners attract interest and support from national governments to help improve survival rates of newborns and children under five in developing countries.
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Six months after receiving a share of the 2013 Healthcare Innovation Award, five organisations based in developing countries are helping shape national health agendas and influencing approaches to healthcare for children and newborns.
One of the winners, MicroClinic Technologies Ltd., was awarded $100,000 for ‘ZiDi™, a mobile health management system, which has now been adopted by the Kenya Ministry of Health. The system is being used as part of the national e-health platform due to its ability to improve medicine supply, service quality and resource accountability for child healthcare. It will be rolled out across 5,000 public health facilities starting next year.
Muso, a community-led organisation in Mali that helps tackle the issue of poverty-related child mortality, also received $100,000 to support its programme which aims to quickly identify women and children in need of healthcare. The award money is being used to help reach 77,000 people across the region and has inspired the Mali Ministry of Health to invite Muso to help draft its five-year strategic plan for scaling up national community-based healthcare delivery.
Previous innovations recognised by the Healthcare Innovation Award are also being implemented across borders through collaboration, ensuring that ideas that may help save children’s lives are being shared. The top-prize winner from 2013 was a low cost Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) kit, developed by Friends of Sick Children (FOSC) in Malawi. This device helps premature and newborn babies suffering from distress breathe more easily. With funding from the Award, and backing from the Ministry of Health in Malawi, FOSC is now sharing this technology with teaching hospitals in Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa. This technology has the potential to save the lives of 178,000 African children each year if implemented continent-wide.
Organisations from across the developing world can now apply for this year’s Healthcare Innovation Award. Applications must be for innovative healthcare approaches that have resulted in tangible improvements to under-5 child survival rates, which are sustainable and have the potential to be scaled-up and replicated. This year, special interest and attention will be given to work that aims to increase the quality of, or access to, healthcare for newborns.
Ramil Burden, Vice President, Africa and Developing Countries, GSK, said: “The success stories we’re hearing from last year’s winners, just six months since receiving their funding, are truly inspiring and we want to help replicate this success. When it comes to improving access to quality healthcare, no single organisation has all the answers and we need to continuously look for new and different ideas, wherever they might be. Our award recognises that often the best solutions to development challenges come from people living with them and through partnerships we can help scale up local solutions to create global impacts.
Dr Sam Agbo, Head of Health, Save the Children said: “This year we’re particularly searching for innovations that are helping to improve the health of newborns in the developing world. Every year, almost three million babies die during their first month of life. But many of these deaths are preventable with the right resources and care in place. We must find different approaches, informed by first-hand experience, to address this issue. This Award provides a platform for working in collaboration, which will ultimately help to save the lives of some of the world’s most vulnerable children.”
More information on the award and application criteria can be found at http://myg.sk/HealthcareInnovationAward. Entries close on 25th August at 11:59pm (GMT). Winners will be announced in December 2014.
Distributed by APO (African Press Organization) on behalf of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
Notes to Editors:
2013 Healthcare Award Innovation Winners – 6 month update
Friends of Sick Children, Malawi: Awarded top prize of $400,000 for their life-saving technology for newborns
– Friends of Sick Children, Malawi is a partnership between the Paediatric Department at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, Rice University’s Rice 360°: Institute for Global Health Technologies in the United States, and University of Malawi College of Medicine
– Their ‘bubble’ Continuous Positive Airway Pressure ‘bCPAP’ device is a low-cost device that helps newborn babies in respiratory distress to keep their lungs inflated so they can breathe more easily
– This low-cost adaptation of traditional CPAP devices can be produced for around $400 – a 15-fold reduction from the average cost of devices currently used in developed countries ($6000)
– Respiratory distress claims the lives of about 1 million African babies each year. It is estimated that this technology could save the lives of 178,000 African children if implemented across the continent
– The Award is helping FOSC to share their bCPAP technology and provide training in teaching hospital neonatal units across Malawi, in partnership with the Ministry of Health, Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa
– To date, FOSC have partnered with the additional three countries, outside of Malawi, to undertake needs assessments regarding patient load, training needs and staff development
– Community healthcare worker training will take place in the Autumn of 2014 in select district and central hospitals and a training website has been launched to support clinical partners with accurate technical and practical applications of the technology following in-person training
– By the end of 2014, all countries in the expansion plan will have undergone training and 10 sites will have 4 bCPAP machines plus associated equipment
– Chokonojesta is just one of the baby boys to have benefited from bCPAP. He was born prematurely at 7 months, weighing just over 2lbs. Although he was able to breathe on his own, his lungs were so immature it took nearly all his energy to do so. With the support of bCPAP, Chokonjesta was able to grow and gain weight and after two weeks he graduated to Kangaroo Mother Care, where skin-to-skin contact with his mother provided warmth and helped him to regulate his own heart beat and breathing. Now 6 months old, he is thriving at home with his family.
BRAC, Bangladesh: Awarded $300,000 for South-South collaboration, helping to improve women and children’s health from Bangladesh to the slums of Sierra Leone
– BRAC’s ‘Manoshi’ is an urban maternal, neonatal and child health programme that that equips healthcare workers with mobile phone-based data collection software, allowing them to more efficiently record and report vital patient information in a simple and standardised format. It offers a comprehensive package of health services to mothers, babies and children to meet their health needs and challenges in three key ways:
? Simple, clean delivery rooms for new mothers with a trained birth attendant
? Quick access to emergency health services for those who cannot afford it
? Patient digital data collection for more efficient health service delivery
– The Award money enabled BRAC to bring the Manoshi programme to the Portee slum of Freetown, Sierra Leone, where under-five and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the world. The total population in the slum is 6,049 people, including 2,593 women and children under five years of age
– Mobile phones will be used to notify staff about pregnancies, births and for sharing information efficiently about complicated deliveries and emergency referrals
– In July 2014, all community healthcare workers in the Portee slum received training on maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) issues , from the District Health Management Team (DHMT) at the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation
– As part of the programme, 15 community healthcare workers have been selected from the community to implement the programme
MUSO, Mali: Awarded $100,000 for delivering care to the doorsteps of some of the world’s most impoverished communities
– MUSO is a community-led organization in Mali that helps tackle the issue of poverty-related child mortality
– Their Award money is being used to deliver healthcare to 77,000 people across the region. The programme supports the early identification of women and children in need of healthcare, before their symptoms escalate to a more serious condition.
– The increased attention and resources made possible through the award will enable MUSO to expand their reach, both in the urban areas, where they currently operate, and into rural areas.
– MUSO will replicate their rapid health system in 157 new communities, reaching a population of 120,000. This expansion will triple the number of people currently served by MUSO and help save millions of lives.
– The momentum generated by the Award has led to increased attention and action at a decision making level. The Malian Ministry of Health invited MUSO to help draft its 5-year strategic plan for scaling up national community-based healthcare delivery to provide quality care for more than three million children under the age of five
– MUSO’s leadership has also been invited to present its model and research to those working to accelerate global child survival efforts at the World Bank, USAID, and the United Nations
– MUSO have begun laying the groundwork to expand its CHW service delivery package beyond the traditional focus on malaria and diarrheal diseases to other challenges, such as pneumonia, maternal and neonatal health, and malnutrition, that impact child and maternal survival
– A MUSO-Medic mobile partnership will be launched to test and deploy a cutting-edge performance dashboard to enable CHWs to directly record and transmit data from home visits on their mobile phones
– A comprehensive site selection process will be undertaken to identify eight health centres that will participate in a rural replication next year.
MicroClinic Technologies, Kenya: Awarded $100,000 to help Kenyan public sector healthcare go digital
– ‘ZiDi™’ is a mobile health management system designed to improve the quality of maternal and child care by providing access to real-time data optimized for health planning decisions.
– With their Award money, MicroClinic Technologies Ltd, was able to develop an enhanced version of ZiDi™ called ZiDi™ Pro, which offers a full range of outpatient, inpatient and specialty care modules enabling it to be accessible at all levels of care and health facilities in Africa.
– Since winning the Award, ZiDi™ Pro has now been deployed in larger health facilities, including the Gatundu District Hospital, which serves more than 3,000 patients monthly. Furthermore, ZiDi™ has been adopted by The Kenya Ministry of Health as part of the national e-health platform, helping the Kenyan health sector to become the first in Africa to launch into the digital era.
– Implementation of ZiDi™ at national scale should achieve the target of automating over 5,000 health facilities within the next three to five years.
– The Kenya Ministry of Health through a public private partnership agreement with MicroClinic Technologies is working to secure buy-in from national and international stakeholders to ensure a successful implementation of ZiDi™ Pro in Kenya, with the hope of sharing lessons learned with other East Africa countries.
– In June 2014, ZiDi™-Pro was launched as a total end-to-end solution offered as a pay-as-you-go service to clinics. Private rural clinics can now afford to automate their services, benefit from improved efficiency in service delivery, remote management of their clinics and better forecast supplies on a weekly basis.
Kangaroo Foundation (Fundacion Canguro), Colombia: Awarded $100,000 in special recognition of its work spreading the Kangaroo Mother Care Method (KMC), to improve the premature and low birth weight babies’ care, for a better quality of life
– Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) is a simple technique which promotes early skin-to-skin contact between mothers and their premature and newborn babies. Mothers act as human incubators, keeping their babies warm, regulating their heartbeats and bond with them.
– This practice has a dramatic impact on reducing morbidity and mortality rates for premature and low birth weight babies.
– By winning this award and along with the support of the Health Ministry of Colombia, the Foundation has been able to widen the KMC health network by training 22 hospitals across country.
– The Kangaroo Foundation is also involved in building an e-learning platform which allows the dissemination of KMC knowledge across borders. In 2015, two countries in Africa, with the highest infant mortality rates, will benefit
– Along with their efforts on the ground, the Kangaroo Foundation is advocating for Colombia to be the first country to have KMC established as an official public health policy and for each district to have a KMC centre of excellence.
Criteria for entry – nominations must:
1) Be from a country classified as ‘low’, ‘lower-middle’, or ‘upper-middle’ income by the World Bank (http://data.worldbank.org/country), and not be from the European Union (http://europa.eu/about-eu/countries/index_en.htm). Countries classified as ‘high income’ by the World Bank or that are in the European Union are not eligible
2) Come from an organisation based in an eligible country, with an innovation used for the benefit of the people in an eligible country
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