Health

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GlaxoSmithKline and Save the Children launch a programme to save the lives of one million children under five years

|  By Maureen Chigbo  |  Jul. 15, 2013 @ 01:00 GMT

GlaxoSmithKline, GSK, and Save the Children recently launched an ambitious new partnership, which aims to save the lives of a million of the world’s poorest children. GSK and Save the Children have instituted a $I million Healthcare Innovation Award, their first joint initiative to identify and reward innovations in healthcare which have proven successful in reducing child deaths in developing countries.

Nominations for the award started from June 27 and will end on August 26. Organisations across the developing world can nominate examples of innovative healthcare approaches they have discovered or implemented. These approaches must have resulted in tangible improvements to under five child survival rates, be sustainable and have the potential to be scaled-up and replicated.

The award will also provide a platform for winning organisations to showcase their innovations and share information to enable others with an interest in improving healthcare to adapt and replicate successful interventions and create a more positive change for children in their own country and beyond.

While good progress has been made in recent years, worldwide 6.9 million children still die every year before their fifth birthday. Often, these children are in the most remote and marginalised communities and in order to bring life-saving healthcare to these hardest to reach children, ambitious new ideas and approaches are needed. The GSK and Save the Children Healthcare Innovation Award aims to discover and encourage replication of the best and most innovative examples of healthcare to have the biggest impact for vulnerable children.

The impact of simple, low-cost innovations can be illustrated through the example of Kangaroo Mother Care which has been shown to reduce the number of babies dying in developing countries. Originally developed by a Colombian paediatrician, Edgar Rey, Kangaroo Mother Care is a simple technique which promotes early skin-to-skin contact between mothers and their premature and new-born babies. Mothers act as human incubators, keeping their babies warm and regulating their heartbeats.  It is now used widely by Save the Children and many other organisations around the world.

Recognising that innovation can take many shapes and forms, the criteria for entry are broad and can include approaches that focus on any aspect of healthcare, including science, nutrition, research, education or partnership working.

Co-chaired by Andrew Witty, GSK chief executive officer, CEO, and Justin Forsyth, CEO of Save the Children, the panel of judges, made up of experts from the fields of public health, science and the academia, will award $250,000 to the best healthcare innovation to further progress in their work. An additional $750,000 will be made available for runners-up awards.

 “Often, the best solutions to a particular challenge come from those living and working closest to it. We recognise this and we are committed to supporting those working in the world’s poorest countries to improve health outcomes. This award will identify the most effective ideas being put into practice in developing countries and, by providing the much needed funding, it will enable the innovations to be scaled-up to reduce childhood deaths as well as inspire others in the process,” Witty said.

Forsyth said: “We believe that we can be the generation to stop children dying from preventable causes – but this can only happen by working in partnership and finding new and innovative ways to get to the hardest to reach children. Through the GSK and Save the Children Healthcare Innovation Award, we can identify and support new and exciting examples of innovation from emerging and developing countries, in order to save more children’s lives.”

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