The most promising innovations for women and children's health in low and middle income countries
The Every Woman Every Child (EWEC) Innovation Marketplace is a strategic alliance of development innovation organizations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The Problem
Maternal and newborn lives at stake by 2030
Maternal deaths occur in Low and Middle Income Countries
of innovations fail to scale their life-saving solutions
Our Results
Since our inception in 2015, we have achieved the following results for our portfolio innovations:
Capital Raised: $45M USDTypes of Support
Hands on
Long-term intensive, venture advisory support, extensive connections over time
Transactional
Short-term, critical connections to network partners
Graduates
Received previous catalytic support from the Marketplace; Exposure opportunities, short term needs.
Portfolio
Innovation: Vacuum-Induced Uterine Tamponade
Innovator: Anne Morrissey, Alydia Health
Strategic Focus: Maternal post-partum hemorrhage
Implementation Area:
Current treatment options for postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) may include the use of pharmaceuticals, hysterectomy, or other invasive surgical procedures. Alydia Health’s vacuum-induced uterine tamponade facilitates the body’s natural mechanism, uterine contractility, to quickly stimulate the body’s natural post-delivery response. The device uses gentle suction to collapse an exhausted uterus, and encourage it to contract fully on its own.
Innovation: Bempu
Innovator: Ratul Narain, Bempu
Strategic Focus: Neonatal
Implementation Area:
Bempu Health is a public health organization that offers innovative life-saving health products for children in low-resource areas. One issue that Bempu addresses is hypothermia, which affects up to 85% of newborns globally and can cause poor growth, poor organ development, and sometimes even death. The Bempu TempWatch is a newborn continuous temperature-monitoring wristband that alerts caregivers if the newborn is hypothermic. Paired with Kangaroo Mother Care, this allows for therapeutic intervention well before complications or death can occur.
Innovation: Ellavi - Uterine Balloon Tamponade
Innovator: Chris de Villiers, Sinapi Biomedical
Strategic Focus: Maternal post-partum hemorrhage
Implementation Area:
The World Health Organization acknowledges the uterine balloon tamponade (UBT) as a life-saving device and recommends it for the treatment of postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) or uncontrolled bleeding due to uterine atony in pregnant women. Currently, commercially available balloons and condom catheters are filled by using a syringe with no pressure control, are too small to fill the complete uterus wall and are not compliant. The Ellavi UBT is the first commercially available pre-assembled pressure-based device with a free flow system to address uterine atony.
Innovation: Congo Red Dot Test
Innovator: Irina Buhimschi, University of Illinois, Wendy Davis, GestVision
Strategic Focus: Maternal - preeclampsia
Implementation Area:
GestVision, Inc. is a biotechnology company developing a simple, rapid, affordable, single use, point of care test that measures urine congophilia to help diagnose preeclampsia, a condition that is a concern in both developed and developing nations. With the gross lack of accurate diagnostic tools for the potentially life-threatening condition of preeclampsia, Congo Red Dot fills a concerning health and market need.
Innovation: Healthy Entrepreneurs
Innovator: Joost van Engen, Healthy Entrepreneurs
Strategic Focus: Access to medicines, antibiotics and diagnostics
Implementation Area:
Healthy Entrepreneurs (HE) is a social enterprise that manages a fully integrated technology enabled end-to-end supply chain delivery business that provides affordable and reliable health products and services to the poorest women and children living in rural areas via a network of trained micro-entrepreneurs called Community Health Entrepreneurs (CHEs). HE’s basket of goods targets the health of children under 5 years as well as sexual and reproductive health goods and information for women and adolescent girls.
Innovation: Ask Nivi
Innovator: Side Goyal, Nivi
Strategic Focus: Contraception, STIs
Implementation Area:
Nivi launched in 2016 with a mission to enable women, men, and adolescents to confidently make decisions about their health. Nivi creates accessible digital products that help populations find credible and actionable information, that is relevant to their sexual and reproductive health needs, and connected to local health systems. Their flagship platform askNivi, launched in late 2017 in India, is an AI powered consumer engagement platform, that has engaged over 100,000 women, men, and adolescents in conversations about sexual and reproductive health.
Innovation: Jacaranda Health
Innovator: Nick Pearson, Jacaranda Health
Strategic Focus: Maternal - postnatal care
Implementation Area:
Jacaranda Maternity, is a for-profit company that provides low cost (less than $150 per day) access to high quality maternal care through deliveries, postnatal care and family planning in Nairobi, Kenya, where less than 20% of women receive postnatal care in the six-week postpartum period. Jacaranda Health, is the sister non-profit, that implements its unique nurse mentorship model in public hospitals together with its SMS based tool that drive care seeking behaviour. The team aims to develop a chain of maternity hospitals capable of serving East Africa’s low-income women with high quality, low-cost maternity care services targeting the launch of 10 hospitals by 2025.
Innovation: Hewa Tele
Innovator: Bernard Olayo & Steve Adudans, Hewa Tele
Strategic Focus: Pneumonia
Implementation Area:
Medical oxygen is the only available treatment for children with pneumonia, which has been the single largest cause of death in children under five for over 100 years. Yet, over one third of health facilities in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access of this essential drug or have an irregular supply. Hewa Tele, Swahili for ‘plentiful air’, is a systematic approach to ensure a reliable supply of oxygen at affordable rates. Through a cost-effective eco-friendly technology (Pressure Swing Adsorption), quality service (hub and spoke delivery model) and a sustainable operational mechanism (Public Private Partnership), Hewa Tele has created affordable access to oxygen.