Updates

Calling For Technological Innovation To Speed Up Saving The Lives Of Mothers And Newborns

By: Joy Lawn
Originally posted by: Healthy Newborn Network

Wind-up powered devices for where there is unreliable electricity, needle-free injections, or inhaled instead. We need more innovation specifically to address the rich-poor gap for medical equipment. An Argentinian car mechanic, inspired by a party trick extracting a cork from a bottle, developed a low cost device to save babies and women from obstructed labor. The Odon device, a plastic bag that is inflated and fixes around the baby’s head to assist during complications due to prolonged second stage of labor, has the potential for wide application in low-resource settings. Across the world, a Norwegian business entrepreneur, has advanced efforts to save babies who do not breathe at birth with a simpler, upright neonatal resuscitation device and lower-cost training mannequins. We need more ideas and more thought leaders like these! Read more...

By: Madeline Taskier, Strategic Partnerships Associate at Women Deliver 

This fall, the Aberdeen Women’s Centre in Freetown, Sierra Leone is bringing hope to thousands of women affected by obstetric fistula. In October, the centre, which provides a variety of maternal and child health services, began offering a free phone hotline, follow up services, and surgery for women suffering from this debilitating condition.

Obstetric fistula, like maternal mortality, is an almost entirely preventable condition experienced by at least 2 million women in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia every year. When a woman has obstructed labor delaying delivery of her baby, a hole can form in the tissue between her bladder, vagina, and rectum causing uncontrollable leakage of feces or urine and can result in a stillborn birth. Performing surgery to repair the fistula is successful 90 percent of the time, but many women in these regions often do not have access to trained surgeons and have little knowledge of existing treatments. Read more...

By: Madeline Taskier, Strategic Partnerships Associate at Women Deliver 

Why is it that you can get a bottle of soda almost anywhere in the world, but not essential health products? Companies like Coca-Cola have mastered the art of shipping and logistics, reaching the most remote places in the world with their products. ColaLife, a non-profit enterprise, asked this same question and decided to leverage the power and efficiency of Coca-Cola’s distribution systems to bring simple health products to the hardest-to-reach communities.

The need for essential health products is great. Read more...

By: Madeline Taskier, Partnership Coordinator at Women Deliver

In honor of World Breastfeeding Week, I’d like to highlight a new innovation that has the potential to save the lives of babies born to HIV-positive mothers. With support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, researchers from Family Health International, University of Cambridge, Drexel College of Medicine, and PATH have developed a low-cost nipple shield which will deliver HIV preventative compounds to a newborn during breastfeeding. Read more...

Fast Company's annual Most Innovative Companies issue today named Voxiva the 40^th most innovative company in the world for “encouraging good health via mobile apps,” bolstering Voxiva’s leadership position in the mobile health field. Voxiva was also 3rd on their list of the Top 10 innovators in the Mobile Industry. Women Deliver congratulates Voxiva on this great news, and agrees with Fast Company editor Robert Safian when he says that, "Innovation has never been more important to our economy and our future." Read more...

By: Madeline Taskier, Partnership Coordinator and Bhuvana Bhagat, Senior Program Officer at Women Deliver

Over 2,700 tech gurus, government officials, non-profit organizations, researchers and private sector companies attended the mHealth Summit last week in DC at the Washington Convention Center. Hosted by the mHealth Alliance of the UN Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Foundation for the NIH, the summit brought together participants across sectors to discuss progress made in mobile health so far and what the future holds. Read more...

By: Madeline Taskier, Partnership Coordinator at Women Deliver

In developing countries there are currently 5 billion mobile phone subscriptions, nearly three times the amount in developed countries. Given the prevalence of mobile phone use and the overwhelming predominance (99%) of maternal deaths occurring in the developing world, what kind of potential does mHealth technology have to change the state of maternal health? According to the presenters at the Maternal Health Task Force Policy Series event on mHealth, the impact of mobile phone technology is far reaching, replicable, and cost-effective.

By: Mariko Rasmussen, Program Assistant at Women Deliver

How did a small landlocked country recovering from genocide become a model for development in Africa? With clear objectives and investment in technological innovation, Rwanda is making significant progress towards achieving Millennium Development Goals 5 and 4. The Rwanda Ministry of Health is working together with partners to improve maternal and child health. From 2000 to 2005, maternal mortality rates decreased from 1,071 to 750 per 100,000, and efforts are being bolstered to continue progress. Read more...                                                                                                                                                 

By: Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, CEO of the Group Vestergaard Frandsen

I shared the stage on Sunday, 19 September with Dr. Imane Khachani of Morocco at the Women Deliver event on "Accelerating Action on the MDGs: Delivering for Girls, Women and Babies" at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. At this important event, I spoke about the need to engage the private sector when developing solutions to addressing global public health issues. As a representative of the private sector, I wanted to highlight the fact that many companies, including Vestergaard Frandsen, want to be a partner in identifying and implementing solutions to improve the lives of girls and women. Read more...

By: Josh Nesbit, co-founder and executive director of FrontlineSMS:Medic

The magnitude of certain problems is fully evident and inexcusable. Each year, 350,000 women and girls die every year from pregnancy-related causes, and over 100 million lack access to family planning. My generation has had access to these staggering statistics for years. As global citizens, we must now choose to act.

I was honored to join heads of UN agencies and government officials, as well as corporate and nonprofit leaders at last week’s Women Deliver event, “Accelerating Action on the MDGs: Delivering for Women, Girls, and Babies.” The theme threading the event’s discussions was clear - low-hanging impact exists, and if we want to increase access to proven interventions, we need to get creative. Read more...

Launched today, in anticipation of the UN Summit on the MDGs, is a new media initiative that draws artists and activists together behind one goal: improving maternal health, the fifth MDG, on which progress has lagged most.

Cofounded by Emmy-winning filmmaker Lisa Russell and Grammy-winning singer Maya Azucena, MDGFive.com includes creative content by world-renowned musicians and poets, including Zap Mama, DJ Spooky, Toni Blackman, and Carlos Andrés Gómez, as well as visual material from filmmakers and photographers Christy Turlington Burns, Paul Blackthorne, and Azfar Rizvi. The site features a “remixer” that can be used to create short videos using a library of music tracks, spoken word, film, and photos supplied by renowned mixed media artists from Brazil, Honduras, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and other countries.

By: Janna Oberdorf, Communications Manager for Women Deliver; orginally posted at the MHTF Blog

The Global Maternal Health Conference has ended – and ended with a bang. The “Maternal health: digital” panel closed the conference with exciting, new, and innovative ways for using technology for global health and maternal health issues. Advances in tools for cross-media storytelling, social networking, digital games, real-time messaging, and mobile and location-aware technologies are being adapted to fit the needs of the maternal health community—and are helping to fuel the increased momentum around the issue.