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Save the Children Receives $60 Million Grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Save Newborn Lives Globally
Westport, CT (December 1, 2005) –
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Save the Children today announced it has received a $60 million, six-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help prevent newborn illness and death in 18 countries in Asia and Africa and to build on the achievements of the Saving Newborn Lives global initiative launched five years ago.
“We are grateful to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for helping make the world a safer and more welcoming place for newborns,” said Charles MacCormack, president and CEO of Save the Children. “This grant will allow Save the Children to reach more mothers and babies with life-saving tools and approaches in countries that need them most.”
“Some global health problems, like AIDS, have no easy solution – but this isn’t one of them,” said Bill Gates. “The world has an opportunity to stop millions of newborn deaths each year.”
“If we are to reduce the more than 10 million annual deaths to children under 5, we must focus on saving babies in the first month – and especially in the first week – of life,” added Charles MacCormack. “Newborns make up 40 percent of the more than 10 million under 5 preventable deaths to children that occur every year.”
Every year, 4 million babies die in the first month of life, 99 percent of them in developing countries – equivalent to the number of babies born in the United States ea ch year. Experts agree that three out of four newborn deaths can be prevented with simple, low-cost tools and services such as sterile razor blades to cut umbilical cords, antibiotics for pneumonia, and teaching mothers the importance of skin-to-skin contact to keep their under-weight babies warm.
Through this new grant, Save the Children will focus on ways to identify and promote the large-scale adoption of proven, low-cost tools and approaches that address the three main killers of 1-week-old babies – infections, lack of oxygen supply to a baby during delivery and at birth, and low birth weight. The organization also will take these measures to scale in 18 countries in Africa and Asia that need them most through the following activities:
- Identifying, implementing, and evaluating “packages” of proven strategies for reducing newborn illness and death, to determine which tools and approaches work best in different settings
- Integrating newborn care into existing maternal and child health programs
- Developing and introducing new tools to fight the three leading causes of newborn death: severe infections, breathing problems and complications of prematurity
- Helping countries to overcome policy and financial barriers to expanding newborn care
The Saving Newborn Lives initiative, started with a $50.5 million Gates Foundation grant in 2000, has already reached more than 20 million mothers and babies with essential health services. The initiative helps ensure access to services such as skilled midwife care; prompt treatment of newborn infections; tetanus vaccines for pregnant women; and education about the importance of proper hygiene, warmth, and breastfeeding for infants.
“Most babies in poor countries are born and die at home with no skilled care at all,” said Anne Tinker, director of Saving Newborn Lives initiative. “And in many countries, babies do not receive their first health check up until they are 6 weeks or even 3 months old.”
“The Saving Newborn Lives initiative has had a huge impact on changing health practices,” added Tinker. “For example, over the past two years, the initiative has helped increase the percentage of newborns born at home who receive care within one week after birth from 30 percent to 57 percent in Bolivian communities, and from 18 percent to 55 percent in Bangladeshi communities. In addition, newborn deaths from tetanus infection in Pakistan have been cut in half – from 28,000 annually to 14,000 – due to a nationwide effort to vaccinate women of child-bearing age.”
“In rural communities in India , Mali and other countries, newborn deaths are so commonplace that babies are not even named until they survive for 6 weeks,” said Tinker. “With this grant and through our Saving Newborn Lives initiative, we hope to change that.”
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (www.gatesfoundation.org) works to promote greater equity in four areas: global health, education, public libraries, and support for at-risk families in Washington state and Oregon in the U.S. The Seattle-based foundation joins local, national, and international partners to ensure that advances in these areas reach those who need them most. The foundation is led by Bill Gates’ father, William H. Gates Sr., and Patty Stonesifer, and has an endowment of approximately $28.8 billion.
