Breakthroughs Blog: MDGs

In this guest post, Sarah Alexander—director of external relations for the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS)—writes about the groundswell of momentum surrounding maternal and child health and the role research and development (R&D) can play in helping more babies have a healthy start to life. You may have noticed maternal and child health has been garnering a lot of attention lately. At the Saving Every Woman Every Child Global Summit in Toronto last week, the focus was on ending preventable deaths of mothers and children under 5, and the government of Canada pledged $3.5 billion toward those efforts. The week prior marked the launch of the Every Newborn series in The Lancet, as well as the endorsement of the Every Newborn Action Plan by the World Health Assembly in Geneva. Later this month, the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health’s Third Annual Partners’ Forum will be held in Johannesburg. All of these events are building on each other and creating a groundswell that will help forge a blueprint for the post-Millennium Development Goal era.The momentum these efforts have gained is impressive, and great strides have been made in saving the lives of mothers and babies around the world. As the global health community looks toward the next 15 years, we are encouraged that more and more plans are incorporating R&D as pillars of a maternal and newborn health agenda. A focus on R&D will allow researchers to look upstream and investigate new ways of preventing problems from occurring in the first place—exemplifying the maxim that prevention is better than cure.There has been a groundswell of momentum for maternal and child health. There are many opportunities for high-impact R&D as part of the agenda. Photo: PATH/Mike WangAt the GAPPS—an initiative of Seattle Children's—we understand and advocate for all the great work that is being done to treat newborns—especially in low-resource settings—to give them a better chance of survival. With our focus on preterm birth and stillbirth, we envision a scenario where instead of treating infants born prematurely or laying to rest nearly 3 million stillborn babies every year, we could instead identify issues in utero and develop therapies to prevent preterm birth, stillbirth, and other pregnancy complications before they occur.Babies born too soon can face lifelong health complications, including respiratory issues, vision and hearing loss, cerebral palsy, developmental delays, and more. Stillborn babies are often not acknowledged with birth or death certificates, or prioritized in health efforts. While it’s essential that known interventions are scaled up to help save the lives of mothers and newborns, we are glad to see a comprehensive R&D movement picking up steam.There are many opportunities for high-impact R&D in maternal and newborn health. For example, new technologies allow for increased biomarker discovery and therapeutics development, which could allow doctors to screen for and treat conditions in pregnant women and their babies before birth, helping more babies have a healthy start to life.With so much momentum building around maternal and child health, we’re glad to see R&D into prevention is being prioritized so that one day every birth can be a healthy birth.

In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week. Kaitlin Christenson, director of the GHTC, summarizes news out of the World Health Assembly (WHA) impacting the global health research and development (R&D) community including debates on the post-Consultative Expert Working Group on Research and Development: Financing and Coordination and post-2015 development agenda, and themes related to regulatory system strengthening, access to essential medicines, and the value of R&D. Renate Baehr—executive director of Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevoelkerung—writes about the next rendition of the European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership and how its expansion will impact more lives in low- and middle-income countries. She discusses how the program has been broadened to include neglected tropical diseases and how African countries will now fully participate in the group’s governance and decision making. The Canadian government announced it would provide $12 million to Grand Challenges Canada to finance innovations to improve maternal and child health in the developing world. The funding will support 65 projects to be implemented across 25 low-and middle-income countries. The announcement came in advance of the Canadian Prime Minister’s global summit on maternal, newborn, and child health taking place in Toronto from May 28-30. Wired reports on the passage of a resolution at WHA to create a global action plan to tackle the emerging problem of antibiotic resistance that will include exploring technology innovations in diagnostic testing and new drug development. The article notes that some experts believe this will not do enough to stem the problem and are calling for the creation of an intergovernmental body on antibiotic resistance that would be similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In this guest post, Rachel Wilson—senior director of Policy and Advocacy at PATH—writes about a new report focused on health innovations for women and children worldwide. The report was released this week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. This post originally appeared on the PATH blog. This week, PATH, along with partners including the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the MDG Health Alliance, and the United Nations Foundation, is releasing a report called Breakthrough Innovations That Can Save Women and Children Now. The publication introduces ten innovations—from products to systems approaches—that could have immediate impact in saving lives. Each is low-cost, effective, and sustainable. If we made a majority of these innovations widely available now, they could save more than 1.2 million women, newborns, and children by the end of 2015. Pair them with other interventions currently available and in development, and we have the power to save millions more lives. Blessing Kingsley holds her four-day-old daughter, Great. Photo: PATH/Evelyn Hockstein. Three ways to save moms and babies For example, magnesium sulfate is the most effective drug to prevent and treat life-threatening pregnancy complications caused by high blood pressure. Simplifying dosing and improving modes of administration would give more poor women access to this lifesaving drug. Similarly, ROTAVAC® is a new vaccine that protects children from the leading cause of deadly diarrhea. If widely available, the vaccine could save thousands of children each year—at the cost of only US$1 a dose. And a program called Helping Babies Breathe uses innovative teaching tools to train health care workers and birth attendants how to resuscitate infants. In Tanzania, the initiative has reduced newborn mortality by as much as 47 percent. Help us get the message out But bright ideas and innovative technologies alone won’t save lives. This week, PATH’s leaders are at the UN General Assembly along with other key global health innovators and policymakers. We’re committed to gathering support so we can deliver solutions to the world’s women and children—and at the same time deliver on the promise of the Millennium Development Goals. At PATH, we’re transforming health through innovations like these. We can achieve a lasting impact only with the support of world leaders—and to get that, we need your support. Help us send the message that we can save women and children with innovations available right now. Join the conversation with @PATHadvocacy and @PATHtweets on Twitter and follow PATH on Facebook as we engage in the #innovations2015 conversation this week. More information See our report, Breakthrough Innovations That Can Save Women and Children Now. Learn more from the UN about the Millennium Development Goals.

This week, many GHTC members will be in New York for the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations’ General Assembly (UNGA), where, among other topics, progress toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will be addressed. Especially relevant this year will be discussions around the post-2015 development agenda. As we close in on the year 2015, and thus the deadline for the MDGs, there is a great deal of speculation about what set of goals, targets, and indicators will drive our development work for the next period. We’ve seen hints through reports released by a High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, and by the Secretary General himself. But much of the work remains to be done, and as of yet there is still a great deal of uncertainty about what the agenda will look like in its final form. We should know more after this week. Previous investments in research to develop new vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, and other tools have led to some of the greatest advances in global health to date. Credit: PATH. Although it was good to see achievements brought about by health science and technology noted in both reports, there is a strong need for greater recognition about the need for new medical innovations to carry us through this next period—as well as the commitments and leadership that will get us there. Previous investments in research to develop new vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, and other tools have led to some of the greatest advances in global health to date, saving countless lives and resulting in billions of dollars in cost savings. With sustained investment and support, further gains are achievable: from the eradication of polio, to the elimination of malaria; from controlling and ending the AIDS and TB epidemics, to effectively diagnosing and treating neglected tropical diseases. The post-2015 development agenda must prioritize innovation for health, and I’ll be listening and talking with development leaders this week to discuss how this can be achieved. Excitingly, innovation seems to be featured in a number of side events that will take place this week—including the MDG Innovation Forum. Through these events, global health and development partners intend to highlight the role that innovation, research and development, and public-private partnerships play in helping us to achieve our development goals. Research and development for new, innovative health tools will be essential to achieve any international development goals and enable more equitable and sustainable improvements across health services and health outcomes. I hope that global health innovation is strongly supported by leaders during this week’s UNGA and that the discussions held this week will result in concrete support for global health research and product development as a key component of the post-2015 development agenda.