A Grand Challenges Africa Opportunity: Funding to improve maternal and child health in Africa

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Nairobi, Kenya I 20 November 2019I The African Academy of Sciences (AAS), the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are today announcing $USD 2 Million in funding for innovative research aimed at improving maternal, neonatal and child health (MNCH) in Africa.

This new funding operationalises a partnership established by the three parties in 2018 to provide coordinated global action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for health.

Globally, there is an ongoing burden of 5.4 million MNCH-related deaths annually, that includes neonatal deaths (2.5 million), stillbirths (2.6 million), and maternal deaths (0.3 million).  Africa, with only 17% of the world’s population, carries nearly half of this burden with 2.3 million deaths per year.

This challenge focuses on the top priorities for MNCH in Africa identified through the 2019 MNCH research prioritisation exercise conducted by the AAS. The exercise used the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) process, which uses the principles of wisdom of the crowds to systematically collect and transparently score research options against important criteria in a particular field. In a three-stage democratic process lasting 7 months, aggregated thoughts from MNCH experts working in Africa and showed that there is a need to concentrate on four areas of importance in MNCH that remain a grand challenge for Africa, detailed below.

Innovators working in Africa-based, domestic organisations, international organisations, government agencies, research and academic institutions will be provided up to $100,000 for two years to develop and implement health innovations to address these four areas of importance:

1. better health during pregnancy
2. better care at birth
3. better post-birth care for women and their newborns
4. better hospital care of sick newborns.

The call seeks to contribute to efforts to meet the United Nations SDGs’ targets of 12 or fewer neonatal deaths per 1,000 live births and to reduce maternal mortality by funding projects that propose innovation in:Read more ...