Archive for the ‘Meetings’ Category

Live Webcast: Essential Obstetric & Newborn Care Meeting in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 by KateMitch

 

The Asia Regional Meeting on Interventions for Impact in Essential Obstetric and Newborn Care begins tomorrow, May 4, 2012 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The three-day meeting plans to focus on postpartum hemorrhage, pre-eclampsia and eclampsia as well as other issues relating to maternal and newborn health. The meeting will bring together maternal and newborn health leaders, clinicians, and program managers.

 

The event is sponsored by the Government of Bangladesh, USAID’s flagship Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Integrated Program (MCHIP), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-supported Oxytocin Initiative, in collaboration with Women Deliver, VSI, FIGO, and ICM.

 

The live webcast of the meeting will be accessible here: http://www.oneworldgroup.org/mchip

 

Tweeting? The conference hashtag is #MNHDhaka.

 

For more information about the meeting, visit: www.MCHIP.net/MNHDhaka

 

Questions? Send them to info@mchip.com.

 

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Economists, Government Officials, and Maternal Health Experts Gather to Discuss Financial Mechanisms for Maternal and Neonatal Health

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012 by KateMitch

The US Government is currently (April 24th-25th) convening an Evidence Summit on Enhancing Provision and Use of Maternal Health Services through Financial Incentives in Washington DC. The Evidence Summit is part of a week of maternal health activities.  Economists, government officials, and maternal health specialists from the academic and development communities from around the world have gathered to take a closer look at the evidence on the impact of financial mechanisms on maternal and neonatal health outcomes.

 

From our colleagues at USAID:

While maternal mortality in low and middle-income countries remains high, maternal health services are greatly underutilized and often of poor quality. Financial barriers contribute to low use of maternal health services. Financial incentives have been shown to have a positive effect on the demand for health services by reducing or eliminating financial barriers to access and increasing household income, as well as on provision of essential interventions in maternity services. However, specific recommendations for use of financial incentives by governments for increasing and improving maternal health services are lacking.

 

According to USAID, anticipated outcomes of the Evidence Summit include:

  1. initial policy and practice recommendations for LMIC governments and donors;
  2. identification of evidence gaps to inform a unified research agenda; and
  3. creation of a community of practice linking the maternal health and economics communities to advance the evidence base together for sustainable effective use of financial incentives.

 

Learn more about the summit  here.

 

Check out the video of yesterday’s event, Learning From Success: Ministers of Health Discuss Accelerating Progress in Maternal Survivalhere.

 

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Academics, Development Workers, Techies, and Entrepreneurs Gather to Share Ideas for Increasing Global Health Equity

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 by KateMitch

This Friday, April 20th, our colleagues at IntraHealth are bringing together “thought leaders, inventors, industry greats, tech superstars, multi-disciplinary entrepreneurs, academics, crisis responders, innovators, brand-makers, communication specialists, community builders, and funders from all over the world”  to share ideas and find solutions for increasing global health equity. The conference, SwitchPoint, promises to merge, disrupt, and infuse the dialogue around global health inequity–with fresh perspectives from various disciplines and organizations including Google, USAID, Medic Mobile, Development Seed, the World Bank, and more. The SwitchPoint webcast is free and requires no registration. Tune in here.

 

SwitchPoint is an unusual gathering of global thinkers and doers merging ideas, sharing breakthroughs, and finding solutions to save lives in the developing world. Come explore how the latest inventions, innovations, entrepreneurial ideas, principles, and change levers can dramatically increase global health equity. You’ll hear from leaders who know how to flip that entrepreneurial switch, getting people across sectors thinking differently about opportunities to create, innovate, and collaborate to save lives and support health and well-being in developing countries.

 

For more details on the conference, visit the conference site here.

 

Learn about IntraHealth’s work on maternal, newborn, and child health here.

 

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Commission on the Status of Women: A Focus on Rural Women

Monday, February 27th, 2012 by KateMitch

The fifty-sixth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) began today and will continue through Friday, March 9th.  According to the CSW website, delegates from around the world have gathered at the United Nations headquarters in New York City where they aim to “evaluate progress on gender equality, identify challenges, set global standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment worldwide.”

The theme of the fifty-sixth session is: The empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication, development and current challenges.

On Friday, Sarah Costa, Executive Director of the Women’s Refugee Commission, shared a post, Prioritizing Reproductive Health, Empowering Women and Girls, on the Huffington Post’s Global Motherhood blog. In her post, Sarah Costa encouraged participants in the CSW to fully integrate the needs of displaced women and girls into their commitments to action for rural women–and to prioritize access to quality reproductive health services for all women.

Sarah Costa writes:

We will make the point that effective humanitarian assistance programs depend on the full inclusion of displaced women and girls in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of relief and recovery activities. We will argue that the international community must redouble its efforts to improve protection for refugee women and girls in rural areas, ensure they can go to school and acquire skills training and that they are able to safely earn a living. And we will press for a renewed commitment to quality reproductive health care.

Reproductive healthcare and women’s empowerment go hand in hand. Sometimes, especially in remote settings, access to reproductive healthcare is also a question of life and death. We know that maternal mortality rates are especially high in conflict-affected countries and that displaced women and girls are at very high risk of sexual violence.

Read the full post here.

Watch the webcast of the fifty-sixth session of the CSW here.

Learn more about the Women’s Refugee Commission here.

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Day 2 at NTEN 2011: People are at the center of technology

Saturday, March 19th, 2011 by Raji Mohanam

Written by: Raji Mohanam, Knowledge Management Specialist, MHTF

 

With 2,000 people trying to access a limited Hilton wi-fi service, it was a struggle to get and then keep a connection on Day 2 at NTEN 2011. It severely undermined our ability to live-tweet during sessions. Apologies! However, this made clear that one thing techie folks understand is the inherent fragility of technology and that for all its amazing potential, it’s still just a tool. Sometimes tools break. In those moments, we are left with the human capacity to adapt. No technology compares to human genious….and we got to see plenty of that  today.

 

I was very impressed with Akhtar Badshah, Senior Director of Global Community Affairs at Microsoft. He moderated a session on innovation and technology where he outlined how our world view is changing because of technology. He said there were three important shifts happening around the world, even at the village-level:

 

1. Technology is now ubiquitous, affordable, accessible and relevant

2. Economics of technology is changing in that the developed markets no longer drive growth, it’s the developing world that is driving growth

3. People are at the center of technology and  knowledge creation; they are no longer on the periphery as passive observers of technology.

 

I think his third point is especially apparent in the development sector. Innovation happens when people apply and adapt technologies to address individual and local problems. Innovation is not a given just because a new technology is introduced. It happens because people take technology into their own hands to change their lives and their destinies. We can see many examples of this ‘customization’ of technology all over the world.  The mPesa program uses mobile phones to address local banking needs in Kenya. Local telemedicine strategies are revolutionizing the way problems are solved in healtchare in India. Egyptians used social media to organize protests that eventually brought down a dictator.  And there are many less-known examples.

 

As a result of this rapidly changing global landscape, NGOs and donors no longer view women, men, and families living in resource-poor countries as ‘victims’ of poverty but as capable agents of change. This global view has occurred to a large extent because of the way human beings  are using technology to meet their own needs, and not because of technology itself.

 

The paradigm is shifting…..and it’s exciting to be part of it!

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Day 1 at NTEN 2011: So many sessions, so little time!

Thursday, March 17th, 2011 by Raji Mohanam

Written by: Raji Mohanam, MHTF Knowledge Management Specialist

 

Almost 2,000 people converged in Washington D.C. today to attend the 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference. The conference, which runs today through Saturday, brings together professionals in the nonprofit sector who are interested in how technology, especially the internet-based kind, can help them achieve their organizations’ missions.

 

It’s my second time at an NTEN conference, so I already know I am going to learn a lot. For days, I’ve been following #11NTC* on my TweetDeck and reading conference tips and announcements from speakers and attendees alike. I have a pretty good idea of what the “hot” sessions will be, like the plenary tomorrow featuring Dan Heath, co-author of Switch.

 

Still, as I page through the conference program book and see the vast number of sessions available to me over the next few days, I can’t help but feel slightly overwhelmed. There are literally hundreds of interesting topics being covered (definitely more than last year), and a number of ‘tracks’ like Social Media, Communications, Advocacy, and Fundraising. To me this signifies the growing demand in the nonprofit sector for timely and good information on how new technologies and online tools can help accelerate and improve the important mission-driven work that we do.

 

So, I need to identify the sessions that will most benefit the Maternal Health Task Force. During the past few months, we have been taking a closer look at our site’s Google Analytics and discovered a steady increase of visitors coming from Facebook (it has become the second or third highest source of traffic to our site next to direct visits or Google searches!). We have a community on our FB page of about 620 people. In our universe, that’s a pretty big group! It’s a group that is vocal, interested, and partly comprised of those who work in resource-poor settings trying to save women’s lives every day! We obviously want to continue growing and engaging this audience. So, it makes sense for me to attend the session on the new Facebook features. However, there’s a simultaneous session on community mapping. With the MHTF interactive maternal health maps growing in popularity among our new and returning members, this is also on my ‘do not miss’ list. What’s a Knowledge Management Specialist to do?

 

Luckily, I’m here with my colleague Chris Lindahl. We will divide and conquer!

 

More updates tomorrow….stay tuned.

 

*You can follow NTC Tweets on Twitter using #11NTC

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A Doctor in Your Pocket: mobile phone-based innovations revealed at the mHealth Summit

Monday, November 15th, 2010 by Raji Mohanam

Written by: Raji Mohanam

Over the course of the mHealth Summit in Washington D.C., I saw and heard about some amazing new mobile phone-based tools that have the potential to dramatically improve--even revolutionize-- global health. In fact, many of them were unveiled and launched during the conference. These innovations move us closer to an era when we may all have a “doctor in our pocket”!

Below are some descriptions of these amazing tools and links to more information about them.

NETRA, created by scientists at MIT, is a smart phone-based vision test that you can give yourself whenever and wherever you are! The NETRA itself is a device that attaches to your cell phone so you can assess eyeglass prescription. All you need to do is look into the NETRA lens through the cell phone display and align the displayed pattern on the screen. Since light rays from this pattern pass through different regions of the eye, the alignment task gives a measure of the optical distortions in the various regions of the eye. You repeat this procedure for a few different patterns and presto, the system computes the corresponding refractive error for myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism!

This innovation provides hope to many remote, under-served adults and children in the developing world who currently do not have access to eye exams.

 

 

Mobisante, based in Redmond, Washington, has developed a small portable mobile phone-based ultrasound device. The device can be used to view ultrasound images/data on the display screen of the phone. The device can be used by healthcare workers directly where an ultrasound machine is not available. As well, it can also be used by non-experts and, potentially, even by patients themselves to transmit images and data to a clinic or healthcare provider for remote diagnosis and monitoring. At scale, the cost is estimated to be less than one dollar per exam! The obvious implications for maternal health in low-resource settings are tremendous and exciting.

 

BugLabs, based in New York City, has come up with “Bug”--a modular software system on a mobile phone platform. The system allows you to attach various devices to your cell phone to build a customized tool that meets your specific needs.  The system has already been used to create customized tools such as heat detectors for firemen, GPS-based alarm clocks, provider-patient appointment reminders, remote patient biometrics monitors, pacemaker monitors, air pollution detectors, and surveillance motion trackers. The potential applications for global health are immense and are limited almost only by our own creativity.

 

Cell Scope, at UC Berkeley, has developed a microscope device that you simply attach to a mobile phone to take it ‘on the road’!  This microscopy-enabled cell phone can then be used to analyze blood or sputum specimens anywhere in the world. The device relies on your cell phone’s camera to turn it into a microscope with 5x-50x magnification. Your phone is then capable of analyzing smears to detect TB, malaria, and many other diseases. Data captured from these analyses is then read by the healthcare provider who is present or transmitted to a clinic or doctor anywhere in the world for remote diagnosis. Imagine the implications for quick and accurate diagnosing of pregnant women in remote areas of the world who are infected with malaria or other deadly parasites.

 

All these innovative tools have creatively and successfully  leveraged the power of a mobile phone as their platform. It is certainly an exciting time for global health! Stay tuned to the MHTF to keep abreast of these and other emerging mobile phone technologies as they improve maternal health around the world.

 

Let us know how your organization is using mobile phones to improve maternal health!

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October 27th: New Applications for Existing Technologies to Improve Maternal Health

Saturday, October 9th, 2010 by Raji Mohanam

*Updated with new speaker information*

Please join the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Global Health Initiative, the Maternal Health Task Force, and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for the eighth event of the series on Advancing Policy Dialogue on Maternal Health: New Applications for Existing Technologies to Improve Maternal Health.

This program features David Aylward, Executive Director, mHealth Alliance at the UN Foundation; Alain Labrique, Assistant Professor, John Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health; and Josh Nesbit, Executive Director, FrontlineSMS: Medic.

Program Date: October 27, 2010

Time: 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Location: 5th Floor Conference Room, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington D.C. (Note: Photo identification is required to enter the building. Please allow additional time to pass through security.)

Live Stream: If you are interested, but unable to attend the event, please tune into the live or archived webcast at: www.wilsoncenter.org. The webcast will begin approximately 10 minutes after the posted meeting time. You will need Windows Media Player to watch the webcast. To download the free player, visit: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download.www.wilsoncenter.org/directions.

Please RSVP to globalhealth@wilsoncenter.org with your name and affiliation.

Program Summary:  In developing countries, the women most in need are often the most isolated, but mobile and web technologies are emerging as a way to bridge this gap and improve maternal health. Technologies such as SMS text messaging provide mothers, health care workers, and institutions with up-to-the-minute information critical to saving lives and building local capacity.

David Aylward, executive director of mHealth Alliance at the UN Foundation will explain how mobile and other emerging technologies such as digital games can facilitate the continuum of care for maternal health. Alain Labrique, assistant professor at John Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, will present data on mobile use in obstretric crises in rural Bangladesh and discuss opportunities, challenges and priorities for maternal and neonatal mHealth interventions in resource-limited settings. Josh Nesbit, executive director of FrontlineSMS: Medic, will discuss the role of collaborative partnerships and share challenges and lessons learned for scaling up existing technologies.

About the Maternal Health Policy Series: The reproductive and maternal health community finds itself at a critical point, drawing increased attention and funding, but still confronting more than a half million deaths each year and a high unmet need for family planning. The Policy Dialogue series seeks to galvanize the community by focusing on important issues within the maternal health community.

The Wilson Center’s Global Health Initiative is pleased to present this series with its co-conveners, the Maternal Health Task Force and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and is grateful to USAID’s Bureau for Global Health for further technical assistance.

For more information on the Advancing Policy Dialogue Series on Maternal Health, click here.

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Proud to be Indian and Making a Difference in Women’s Lives

Friday, September 10th, 2010 by KateMitch

Written by K G Venkateswaran, IntraHealth International

A longer version of this blog was originally posted on the IntraHealth International Global Health blog.

Sitting here in Delhi at the Global Maternal Health Conference in the India Habitat Center, I feel proud to be Indian. Yes, in part it is that the conference is well-run, and the speakers are thoughtful and thought-provoking, but also it is the fact that India is among the countries showing steady decline in the numbers of deaths related to pregnancy. In fact, the latest The Lancet numbers suggest we may be achieving as many as 4% fewer deaths every year in India.

These numbers reflect years of work and commitment on the part of many groups, including the Indian government. At the conference’s opening session, a number of government representatives spoke, including Dr. Montek Singh Ahulwalia, the deputy chairman of the planning commission. He pointed out that in 2004, India spent less than 1% of its GDP on public health; today that number is 1.2%. In the next five years, the government plans to increase spending on health to 3% of the GDP. In terms of the government’s focus on saving women’s lives, Minister of Health and Family Welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad said, “Finding the solution is not the challenge; the challenge is in implementing the solution.” Azad shared the government’s strategy of prioritizing districts that are in particular need of intervention and funneling additional human resources into the health system to strengthen the country’s ability to deliver health services. Even as we scale-up our funding and focus on public health and maternal health, Dr. Gita Sen, professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, urged the global community to look beyond its focus on lowering maternal mortality rates to actually measuring women’s health outcomes in a variety of ways that account for the social, economic, and human development context.

This week, I have also had the pleasure to present several IntraHealth-led experiences, along with my colleagues Madhuri Narayanan, Fatou Ndiaye, and Sara Stratton:

· In Uganda, expansion of human resources for health, especially in the nursing field

· In India and Uganda, alternative supervision approaches to compensate for a shortage of people in supervisory positions

· In Rwanda and Mali, strengthened pre-service education

· In Senegal, integration of indicators on use of active management of third stage labor in the national level tracking of health performance.

I have been thrilled to hear about work similar to IntraHealth’s in Nepal, India, and Tajikistan on creating call centers and working with communities to provide emergency transport to women with childbirth complications and providing women with cash incentives to make maternal health services more accessible and encourage their use.

It has been a motivating week, and I look forward to sharing more of the development from Delhi soon.

K G Venkateswaran is the deputy director of the Planning for Improving Maternal and Neonatal Health in Northern India Project at IntraHealth International, Inc.

For more posts about the Global Maternal Health Conference, click here.

Visit the conference site here.

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Post-partum Haemorrhage: Low-tech Interventions, High Potential to Save Lives

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 by KateMitch

Written by Maria M. Pawlowska, Cambridge University Gates Scholar

According to the latest WHO Countdown report, post-partum haemorrhage (PPH) is responsible for over a third of maternal deaths worldwide. During a session at the Global Maternal Health Conference last week, I learned about a number of prevention and treatment methods for PPH.

Dr. Sydney A. Spangler, Research Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, stressed that with any intervention, it is very important to consider the context not only on the national level, but also on the community level.

Misoprostol

The session focused to a large extent on misoprostol, a drug that is used for treating and, importantly, preventing post-partum haemorrhage in low-resource settings with minimal financial inputs but remarkably impressive health outputs.

Notable characteristics of misoprostol:

1.)   It is cheap

2.)   It is widely available

3.)   It has mild or no side affects

4.)   It is chemically stable in high temperatures (i.e. no need to have access to refrigeration or reliable electricity supply).


Misoprostol has an interesting background story. It was initially used to treat stomach ulcers. It was then discovered to be a safe method for inducing medical abortion (i.e. with no need for surgical interventions)—and it was soon realized that the same uterine contractions that lead to abortions in the first trimester can also stop or prevent excessive bleeding during labour, making it highly effective against post-partum haemorrhage.

Blood Collection Mat

When exactly is bleeding excessive? There is always some blood loss associated with birth, and as mentioned by Shabram Shanaz from Pathfinder, women in places like Bangladesh give birth in their clothes, so it is often difficult to judge blood loss.  In order to help women and their families decide when there is need to seek referral to a health clinic, an absorbent mat has been developed which indicates when a threshold of 500ml blood loss is reached. The mat is now one of the supplies given out to pregnant women.

Education

Shabram Shanaz went on to describe how the Pathfinder project in Bangladesh taught women and their families life-saving procedures which can be implemented with or without the assistance of a skilled birth attendant. Dr. Shanaz stressed the importance of empowering women and their families. If families are provided with basic information in a clear and culturally appropriate fashion, they can quickly become skilled at labour risk management and empowered to make the right decisions–whether it be taking the appropriate medication at home or seeking hospital referral. Pathfinder not only provides educational workshops but the organization also provides women with a post-partum haemorrhage kit. The kit, packed in a bright red bag, includes everything that a woman might need–including mobile phone numbers for health workers in the area. Supplying the bags costs only US$1 per bag—but have had a huge impact on the lives of women and their families. They are empowered to act. In fact, in the Pathfinder study area, all of the women used the supply kits.

Supplying misoprostol along with other basic equipment such as blood collection mats, in a way that is easily accessible when needed (i.e. in a container which is well-labelled and difficult to lose such as the red bags handed out by Pathfinder) is a low-tech and affordable, but effective way of improving maternal health. Gaps in research and funding are not the major barriers to making preventable maternal mortality a thing of the past––we know what works and many of the effective interventions are quite affordable.  Now, we need to think critically about how to get passed the barriers to implementing these proven interventions at scale.

For more posts about the Global Maternal Health Conference, click here.

Visit the conference site here.

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