The low-cost device saving newborns in India

The United States has the highest mother mortality rates of any developed country. Through a clinic on wheels, Merck for Mothers is giving prenatal check-ups to low-income pregnant women in Philadelphia and curbing deaths related to childbirth.

In South Carolina, a Medicaid program is offering long-acting contraceptives during a new mother’s hospital stay, while she is still eligible for the benefit. Other states are following suit.

Project Baby Bear is a grant-funded pilot program that uses genome sequencing to to diagnose sick infants. The doctors hope to save lives and save the system money on unnecessary treatments. Since very few sick infants show symptoms that correlate to their genetic diagnosis, these tests are instrumental in positive health outcomes.

Some medical schools are now incorporating interviews with healthy seniors into their curriculum. These interactions help young medical students combat ageist stereotypes they may unconsciously develop through treating unhealthy older people. It also builds empathy and a sense of what good geriatric health looks like.

The poliovirus has plagued Nigeria for years, but the country is approaching near-eradication thanks to community public health workers' efforts to increase education, immunization and reporting. Throughout the country workers known as Disease Surveillance and Notification Officers are trained to recognize the symptoms of polio so the cases can be reported and addressed immediately. Coupled with the efforts of community informants, this approach has already resulted in parts of Nigeria becoming polio-free.

The simple addition of adding handles to bathroom stalls in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh has helped the camps' pregnant women regain a sense of empowerment and dignity. Providing support and balance, the design of these latrines have benefited the elderly in the camps as well.

Mozambique has a shortage of practicing surgeons, so medical technicians are being trained to fill their roles in various situations, especially in rural locations. Although there are challenges to using this tactic, the technicians-turned-surgeons have similar complication rates as those who are practicing surgeons.

Mayday Health is a health-education nonprofit that helps patients in states that have banned abortion figure out how to get abortions anyway. For people living in states where abortion is banned, Mayday provides step-by-step instructions for how to obtain abortion pills, as well as medical information about the safety and reliability of medication abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy.

The Maternal and Neonatal Emergency Transport Scheme helps to increase access to healthcare services for women and newborns in rural areas through its informal transport/ambulance service. There are currently 2,500 registered drivers with the program willing to transport those in need of care and they serve about 70-90 women in labor each month.

To address gaps in healthcare access, the local government partnered with organizations like Plan International, German Cooperation and the World Bank’s Saving One Million Lives Project to build, refurbish and equip primary healthcare centers across the state to provide better care. As of May 2023, 138 centers have been built or upgraded, offering maternity care services, child healthcare, vaccinations and family planning among other services.