NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, October 28, 2016

Achieving the ambitious target to end maternal and child deaths, enshrined in the sustainable development goals (SDGs), will require ingenuity. The good news is that 11 health innovations could save more than 6 million mothers and children by 2030, if they are invested in and used widely in 24 priority countries.

When I began working in global health (at the World Health Organisation in 1990) 12.7 million children under five and 532,000 new mothers died every year. The challenge looked insurmountable. But in the two decades that followed, unprecedented global cooperation resulted in annual child deaths being cut by more than half, to 5.9 million in 2015, and annual maternal deaths to just over 300,000.

As impressive as the progress has been, it’s not enough. The current rate of decline in maternal and child mortality will not get us to the ambitious SDG targets by 2030. We need innovative tools and approaches to accelerate progress.

The 11 innovations modelled in our analysis, crowdsourced from experts around the world, are gamechanging health technologies and approaches that will have wide-scale impact, ensure healthier babies, protect mothers, and secure better health in the long term.