Maternal Health Innovations Fund

The goal of the Maternal Health Innovations Fund was to amplify the voices of women and health caregivers in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and South Kyrgyzstan to maximize women’s maternal health decision-making by leveraging both local knowledge and technical capacity. The Maternal Health Task Force, in partnership with the International Center for Diarrheal Research in Bangladesh and Aga Khan University in Pakistan, supported projects that aimed to:

• Enhance the ability of maternal health communities in low-resource settings to create dialogue on pressing maternal health issues and build consensus on strategies to address challenges.
• Conduct evidence-based research to improve maternal health care issues at the community, facility, district and national levels.
• Promote collaborations in low- and middle-income countries to expand and enrich the spectrum of solutions.

Learn more about the Maternal Health Innovations Fund projects:

Afghanistan

• Community Maternal Mortality: To assess the causes and rates of maternal death in three provinces and design effective interventions for follow-up projects
• Seeking Health Care in Afghanistan: To determine how women choose health care facilities by interviewing providers, women and policymakers

Bangladesh

• Knowledge Exchange for Health Service Providers:  To reduce maternal and neonatal mortality rates before, during and after childbirth through a providers’ knowledge exchange in a rural sub-district
• Childbirth Checklist: To use the World Health Organization Safe Childbirth Checklist to incentivize women in two district hospitals to choose primary health facilities for delivery
• Digitized Blood:  To assess the effectiveness of implementing a quick-access blood availability information system in reducing transfusion time, blood collection risks and maternal deaths
• Pregnancy, Delivery and Postpartum Care: To evaluate protocol-driven emergency obstetric and newborn care in select health facilities

Southern Kyrgyzstan

• Referral System: To assess functional and dysfunctional elements of the maternal and newborn referral system

Pakistan

• Communication and Transportation Links: To evaluate how improving communication and transport between community and health facilities impacts use of maternal and perinatal services
• Rapid Appraisal of District Health Information System: To assess efficiency and use of Pakistan’s newly revised District Health Information System
• Perinatal Audit Tools: To introduce perinatal audits and early-warning feedback to improve quality of care in emergency cesarean sections at a Karachi maternal and newborn hospital