Source: AllAfrica
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is praising innovators from around the globe for their work to protect the health and lives of mothers and children at birth, particularly in rural areas of the developing world.

She spoke to the Saving Lives at Birth Development Exchange at the State Department July 28, where innovators gathered from across the world with proposals for new technologies, new service-delivery models and new ways to stimulate demand for health care services at the time of birth.

"A woman, still today in 2011, dies in childbirth every two minutes. In 2009, according to the World Health Organization, 2.6 million children were stillborn. One million newborns die every year in the two days after birth, and we just cannot watch that happening without saying: How can we prevent these deaths?" Clinton said. To change this equation, the secretary said, affordable, scalable and sustainable solutions are needed to help women and children in hard-to-reach places.

A partnership named "Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development" issued a call for innovations in March to address the causes of mother and newborn deaths. The partnership brings together efforts from the U.S. government, international partners and nongovernmental organizations, with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) taking a leading role.

According to a July 28 USAID statement, the partnership received more than 600 submissions from around the world and selected 77 finalists, who travelled to Washington July 26-28 "to compete in the final stage of the competition, display their ideas to the public in an open marketplace and establish connections with a community of innovators dedicated to a single cause: ensuring every mother delivers safely and every newborn has a healthy start to life."

Clinton said the submissions address the "persistent" and "heartbreaking" challenges of maternal and child health, and that many focus on the most critical window for maternal and child health: from the onset of labor to 48 hours after childbirth. The secretary said many also address the need for pregnant women to have access to adequate nutrition and prenatal care, life-saving medicines and skilled health workers during labor.

She encouraged each of the 600 entrants from all over the world, the 77 finalists and the eventual winners to continue working on innovations, calling their efforts "the kind of creative approach toward enhancing development that I think is in the best interests of the people whom we are hoping to serve."

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah delivered a similar message at the program's launch in March.

"To make advances in maternal and newborn health, our real opportunity lies in harnessing the power of innovation - scientific, technological and behavioral - to build a continuum of invention from bench to bush," he said. Innovations should allow the program to expand its reach "to women who will likely never set foot inside a hospital."

The challenge to innovate was issued using the collective resources of USAID, the government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada and the World Bank. According to USAID, the partners expect to provide about $14 million for the grant program's first round of funding, and at least $50 million during the next five years.