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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.

In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released a report stating that the United States faces "potentially catastrophic consequences" if health officials do not act immediately to combat rising drug resistance to antibiotics. CDC Director Tom Frieden has also stressed that public health efforts, including research, are more important than ever to address emerging health threats like drug resistance. A new Forbes opinion piece argues that public-private partnerships are key to combatting diseases such as HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. In related news, Rajiv Shah—administrator for the US Agency for International Development (USAID)—recently spoke with Scientific American about how USAID is diversifying its partnership base to address global development challenges. “There’s a growing global need for innovative financial solutions,” Graham Macmillan and Hui Wen Chan from the Citi Foundation write as part of a new blog series. “Innovation and collaboration are necessary to tackle” international development challenges, they write, adding that advance market commitments and the International Finance Facility for Immunization are examples of “exciting innovations that have the capacity to make a major impact.” A new opinion piece in Roll Call states that in addition to the “prospect of a government shutdown or a default on the national debt, the most destructive aspect of the federal budget impasse is the sequester’s damage to basic scientific research, especially biomedical research.” The MenAfriVac™ meningitis vaccine has reduced cases of the potentially fatal disease by 94 percent in Africa’s meningitis belt, researchers reported this week in The Lancet.

The GHTC has long stressed that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plays a critical part in efforts to improve global public health. While the FDA is best known for its work to protect the health of US consumers, the agency has a strong history of sharing its expertise to benefit people worldwide and is playing an increasingly vital role in global health issues. The GHTC has released two new resources that provide fresh evidence on the FDA’s growing global health presence, while also offering recommendations for how the agency can continue to strengthen its efforts to improve health and save lives worldwide. Our new fact sheet and policy brief focus on five key areas at the FDA. First, the FDA leads numerous international programs from its headquarters in the United States and operates offices and posts in ten countries across the globe. As the agency expands and deepens its contributions to global health, it is essential to ensure FDA’s activities contribute to an agency-wide strategy. Therefore, the FDA should create an office of neglected diseases so that it can better drive coordination among its centers and offices to maximize its global—and domestic—health impacts. This new program should be housed within the FDA’s Office of the Commissioner. By formalizing the agency’s global health activities, better oversight can help ensure that related programs and initiatives contribute to a unified goal. The GHTC has released two new resources that provide fresh evidence on the FDA’s growing global health presence, while also offering recommendations for how the agency can continue to strengthen its efforts to improve health and save lives worldwide. Credit: PATH Second, the FDA should continue to build partnerships with global regulatory stakeholders, such as the World Health Organization and national regulatory authorities. Regulatory review of products designed for use in the developing world can be particularly challenging, especially when the national regulatory authorities do not have the capacity or resources to manage the reviews. To address this issue, the FDA offers trainings and contributes to global efforts to improve regulatory harmonization. The agency also supports a variety of global regulatory initiatives. But this is just the beginning. To realize the positive impacts of these investments, FDA should continue to contribute to and expand these efforts. Third, while FDA has taken impressive steps to increase its engagement globally, without formalized reporting and oversight mechanisms the outcomes of this work can wane in the face of other priorities and funding constraints. To increase transparency and accountability for its global health commitments, the FDA should take steps to establish formalized processes to report to Congress on its neglected disease activities. Fourth, while its first priority is the health of Americans, it is essential that the FDA arms itself with global health experts who can help carry out a comprehensive plan. To strengthen the work already being conducted in the agency’s international offices and posts, FDA should dedicate additional staff members and resources to global health engagement. Finally, FDA—like so many agencies across the US government—is facing severe financial constrains due to sequestration and broader budget cuts. We’re facing the possibility of a government shutdown at the end of this month, as congressional policymakers still have not reached an agreement on the federal budget. Without question, this financial uncertainty hinders FDA’s ability to strengthen its role in global health and safeguard the health of American citizens. It’s critical that congressional policymakers pass a smart budget agreement that avoids another round of sequestration cuts while protecting key programs at FDA and other federal agencies that work in global health. As House and Senate leaders continue their budget negotiations, they have the opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to lifesaving and efficient programs at leading agencies like the FDA.