THE CHARITY organisation Concern Worldwide is to receive a five-year $41 million grant (€28.7 million) from the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation to support child health initiatives in a number of countries.
The organisation’s chief executive, Tom Arnold, described the grant as a vote of confidence in Concern which would identify and test ideas to improve essential healthcare delivery to mothers, infants and children in Africa and south Asia.
The initiative will start in Malawi, India, and Sierra Leone, which face major obstacles to reaching the 2015 Millennium Development Goals for maternal and child health.
Mr Arnold said Concern had been working on the project for 12 months and it was competing for funding for the project from the foundation against 14 other groups.
He said Concern had already recruited staff for the project and consultations would begin with the ministries of health, universities, the private sector and private individuals in the six countries seeking their solutions to the problems.
Mr Arnold said their ideas on how to scale up effective delivery of proven interventions which could save millions of lives, would be evaluated on a “dragon’s den” type system where the most effective systems would be aided.
The scheme will field-test and evaluate at least 27 breakthrough ideas which would come from mid-level and junior health workers, academia, civil society, the private sector and community members – stakeholders with traditionally limited influence or decision-making power in the health sector. In Sierra Leone, more than 25 per cent of children die before reaching their fifth birthday, and in Malawi, one in every 18 women dies during pregnancy or childbirth.
In India and Malawi, two-thirds of mothers and children lack essential health services like vaccinations, skilled care at birth and micronutrient supplements.
Proven interventions already exist, with the potential to save millions of lives.
The challenge is to scale up effective delivery to ensure the interventions reach all the people who need them.
“Even the most effective health interventions can only save lives if they reach the people who need them,’’ said Jaime Sepúlveda, director of the Integrated Health Solutions Development programme at the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation. “Concern Worldwide’s commitment to seeking innovation from diverse, non-traditional sources will be a key ingredient in the success of this programme,” he said.
Mr Arnold said Concern had been working on such child survival programmes for the past 10 years and he welcomed the opportunity to work with the Gates Foundation on the programme, which is spread over a five-year period.