Search results for:

Issue Ninety percent of all maternal deaths globally occur in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Kenya is one of the countries contributing to the high maternal mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa and maternal mortality is a Millennium Development Goals key indicator where the country is deteriorating. Solution Operation Karibu is an innovative reproductive health project implemented by…pack of baby clothes serves as a motivator. The clothes are made through a micro-enterprise model in which the local women of reproductive age (who also double up as community health workers) are trained to produce the clothes, using locally available materials. Some clothes are donated to the mothers at the health facilities and others…facility deliveries were made as a result of this program and these numbers were achieved at the budgeted cost. The Operation Karibu project has created real livelihood for 41 community health volunteers (CHVs) and has drawn them closer to the health facilities. Through this project, CHVs have received monthly remuneration, as well as a micro-enterprise…

IssueIndia currently lacks newborn screening programs (NBS) to detect and treat serious and life threatening congenital abnormalities. Simple screening programs could save children from developmental disorders, disability, and death. Raising the awareness of parents and stakeholders is difficult, with 76% of the Indian population part of low socioeconomic groups and 20% of this group being sub-classified as poor. Implementing a NBS in India requires careful cost-analysis due to its high population. Currently, there is a lack of data demonstrating the need and viability of such a program. One particular major ailment for children is vitamin responsive seizure (VRS), though a single reliable technique for detection has not been developed outside the use of mega-doses. Solution The project aimed to…

Issue Disruptive factors – whether social or environmental – prevent the daily administration of medications for patients on HIV treatment and tuberculosis DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short Course). In Haiti, after the 2010 earthquake, housing was disrupted for many patients who had to live in tents and temporary housing, and/or were forced to move every few days or weeks. In such an environment, relying on community workers to track and…

Issue Rural areas in many developing countries are faced with poor, unreliable and unsustainable water services. Even where there are hand pumps, a majority of water supply facilities do not provide a basic level of service and there are constant breakdowns of equipment. Solution Implemented in Ghana, the project team developed a mobile phone application aimed at improving the sustainability of rural water service delivery by providing a better supply chain for spare parts. The team partnered with SkyFox Ltd., a private, SMS-based payments service provider in Ghana, and Millicom Ghana Limited, one of the leading telecommunications service providers in Ghana, to develop and deploy its SMS platform for checking/ordering hand pump spare parts in 70 rural communities in Ghana. The platform was integrated with Millicom Ghana Limited’s Tigo…

Issue Tuberculosis (TB) affects nine million people annually and is highly infectious. Sputum smear fluorescence microscopy is the recommended method to detect TB but accessibility is limited. Solution The objective of the project was to develop a device that converts a cellphone into a sputum smear reader for TB diagnosis in medically under-serviced regions of Pakistan. The device combines a specialized lens, image-processing software and widely available camera phones. The device, comprising of eight LEDs and a magnifying lens, can send live-streaming videos of a magnified sputum smear slide to a cellphone, using its own Wi-Fi signal. The software is a graphical user interface (GUI) that displays the live-streaming video of the sputum smear slide to the operator. Outcome The team was successful in…

Issue The World Health Assembly has emphasized the need for strengthened emergency medicine services worldwide to reduce the burden of acute illness/injury in developing countries. Ethiopia faces a challenge in providing adequate emergency medicine services due to a critical health worker shortage, leaving it with only one doctor for every 45,000 people and no emergency medicine …sudden illness in the ED, the hospital is expanding the number of intensive-care unit beds, improving communication and transfer between hospitals and expanding operative capacity. A trauma registry, supported by Grand Challenges Canada, has captured the immense burden of injury seen in the ED for the first time. With this data and new knowledge, the Federal…

Issue To manage and mitigate the impact of global emergencies and disasters of increasing frequency and magnitude, there is a need to expand the number of trained health professionals. Equally important is the need for access to updated data, information and knowledge on health and emergencies. Solution A project to advance and standardize humanitarian training was implemented online through a partnership between McGill University, the…

Issue More than 200 million children worldwide are at risk for lost developmental potential, but very few children are screened or treated for neurodevelopmental delays. Research shows that early, stimulating, responsive parent-child interactions build young neuronal density and can buffer the effects of poverty, but distributing this knowledge to vulnerable families has been a challenge. Solution The Universal Baby team at Socios En Salud (Partners In Health, Peru) sought to test whether six videos – designed to engage the primary caregiver in affectionate interactions – could significantly improve the quality of mother-child interaction. The project involved mothers of children between the ages of 10…Universal Baby clips of eight to 12 minutes each. Community Health Workers (CHWs) were trained by project staff to incorporate the videos into 12 weekly ‘healthy child’ group sessions. Videos were delivered by CHWs to 18 mothers as a bi-weekly component to group visits, while an additional 20 mothers received the healthy child visits only.…

Issue The emergence of drug-resistant HIV (DR-HIV) is a global health crisis, with up to 72% of patients failing HIV treatment and 6.8% of newly infected individuals now having evidence of drug-resistant HIV (World Health Organization, 2012). Drug resistance is fueled by under-diagnosis of HIV treatment failures and resistance, which require viral load testing. Rwanda, a Sub-Saharan country with over 150,000 individuals living with HIV, has just one facility capable of viral load testing, which is slow, costly and inaccessible. There is an urgent need for approximately 200,000 HIV viral load tests per year for Rwanda’s 42 district hospitals. Solution Nanobiosym (NBS), in collaboration with its on-the-ground partners in Rwanda, introduced and piloted its…

Issue Street food contributes significantly to urban food supplies in 74% of World Health Organization (WHO) member states and is often a source of nutrition for people with low income. Bacterial contamination in street food causes enteric diseases; unpublished reports from Bangladesh document a poor sense of food safety among street food vendors and a high …safety education program to improve food safety knowledge, attitudes and practices among street food vendors. Use of low-cost techniques for treating water used for street food can promote a vendor’s business and livelihood. The study tested food items of 115 street vendors in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and found that 30% of the street food in Dhaka…was received through an agreement between the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) and FAO. The project team is planning on applying for Phase II Transition To Scale funding to scale up in a selected number of wards of Dhaka South City and evaluating the impact of scale-up in improving street food safety in a larger street food vendor…