USAID hails 'eureka moments' in infant, maternal health

US National Security Advisor Susan Rice has called for more "eureka moments" and "unorthodox partnerships", as she addressed scientists working on decreasing infant and maternal mortality in poor countries.
Researchers, many of whom were finalists for a competitive USAID grant, came up with varied schemes, including using a football to stop women from bleeding to death after birth, using contaminated hospital waste to keep hands cleaner and engineering bacteria to fortify yogurt with vitamin A.
A previous grant project -- which created a low-cost device to help in obstructed labour -- was initially created by an Argentine car mechanic inspired by a YouTube video on how to pull a cork out of a wine bottle with a plastic bag.

Rice, in her first public remarks since taking on the job, said these researchers had "done a remarkable job advancing the president's vision to elevate development alongside diplomacy and defence as an equal pillar of our national security."
But, citing statistics that a woman in labour in sub-Saharan Africa was 136 times more likely to die than her counterpart in a developed country, Rice said "we need more eureka moments and more unorthodox partnerships to beat persistent world challenges."
USAID director Rajiv Shah, who launched the "Saving Lives at Birth" development challenge three years ago, said "there's been extraordinary progress over the last couple of decades. But there are some areas that have" resisted the trend -- and maternal and infant mortality was one of them.

"In 1990, 20 million kids a year died under the age of five. Today that number is just under seven million," Shah told AFP.

"But if you break down the problem, in the first 48 hours of life, infant mortality in that very narrow window has stayed persistently high and has not fallen at that rate. And maternal mortality, while it is down, it hasn't fallen anywhere near that rate as well."
So Shah said the grant program aimed to "invite the whole world in to coming up with appropriate solutions that would accelerate progress in that specific area."
He said each year hundreds of teams apply for the grants, far more than the 15 or fewer applications for a conventional grant.

"This definitely reaches well beyond the standard crowd to bring in a whole host of new innovators."
In partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Grand Challenges Canada, and Britain's Department for International Development, the program gives seed grants of USD 250,000 and transition grants of up to USD 2 million.