Maternal and Child Health
In India, neonatal and maternal mortality, despite some improvement, still remain unacceptably high. Ensuring the survival of the mother and child, and then ensuring that they thrive, is not only the focus of the Sustainable Development Goal -3 (SDG3) but is also central to the achievement of national health goals under the National Health Mission (NHM). A healthy baby born to a healthy mother, put on the right growth trajectory after birth, is more likely to grow to become a healthy and productive adult.
To tackle the challenge of MCH, Grand Challenges India (GCI) has made MCH an important vertical to direct investments. Considering that the Nation’s most pressing challenges are reducing the rate of preterm birth, reducing infants’ deaths, reducing the incidence of low birth weight, reducing child stunting or wasting, reducing micronutrient deficiency and improving children’s cognitive development, GCI has launched and supported an array of programs under this ambit.
All these programs work through different mechanisms. Some are intended at discovering risk factors/ predictors; biomarkers; identifying physiological pathways to understand causal linkages; recognizing MNCH strategic priorities and integrating existing data including secondary data analysis to identify knowledge gaps. While some of these programs also provide an opportunity to share MCH data within the country and abroad as a common platform to better target research as well as policy.
Programs launched and funded under Maternal and Child Health
There are 9 programs launched.
All Children Thriving
I was underweight. After 2 miscarriages, the MCH program helped me with the right care to give birth to my baby boy.
IMPRINT - Nutrition Intervention Trial
This is another specialized program under GCI portfolio that is conducting randomized controlled trial (RCT) with an efficacy model being tested in low resource communities in urban Delhi with high rates of stunting.
Pregnancy Risk Stratification Platform Alignment
The establishment of a Pregnancy Risk Stratification platform is being supported to Christian Medical College, Vellore by the Gates Foundation, as a surveillance and trial platform at 2 sites in India-Palwal, Haryana and Makunda (Bazaricherra), Assam
Multi-Omics for Mothers & Infants
A hospital-based cohort of pregnant women, GARBH-Ini ((interdisciplinary Group on Advanced Research on BirtH outcome - DBT India Initiative)
Non-Hormonal Contraceptive Discovery Program
To understand the potential contraceptive drug targets and mechanisms, that would be suitable for drug discovery activities and could provide highly effective inhibition of fertility with a very clean safety profile
HBGDki
Healthy Birth Growth Development and knowledge integration program uses the power of data analytics & modelling using cohort data that we already have to provide answers to questions
knowledge integration (ki) Data Challenges for MCH
The Grand Challenges India sixth thematic call was announced on 3rd July 2018 on ‘“ki data Challenge for Maternal and Child health- Data Science Approaches
Knowledge Integration and Translational Platform
The Knowledge Integration & Translation platform has a division that is devoted to the MCH space, again specifically geared to understanding the gaps in evidence in India.
Global Scale for Early Development
The available evidence strongly supports that the first 1000 days (conception through age 24 months) and the period to the end of the third year of life, are foundational for brain development.