VIA Global Health, the leading global health purchasing platform with a network of distribution partners across Africa, South Asia and Latin America, has been awarded a multi-year contract for scaling and accelerating the impact of maternal and newborn health focused innovations through the Saving Lives at Birth program.

Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development is a partnership of international organizations led by United States Agency for International Development, Grand Challenges Canada (Canadian Government), The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Norwegian Government along with the governments of the United Kingdom and South Korea.

Every two minutes, a woman dies in childbirth. And in sub-Saharan Africa, women are 136 times more likely to die than in developed countries. We also know that healthy mothers help raise healthy children who get better food and more time in school – leading to stronger families, communities and nations.

The onset of labor marks the start of a high-risk period for both mother and baby that does not ease until at least 48 hours after birth. During this short period of time, 145,000 maternal deaths, 1.45 million neonatal deaths, and 1.2 million stillbirths occur each year.

[Saving Lives at Birth aims to] accelerate substantial and sustainable progress against maternal and newborn deaths and stillbirths at the community level. We need to harness the collective imagination and ingenuity of experts across a broad range of disciplines and expertise. (Excerpted from https://savinglivesatbirth.net/)

The contract is part of larger $13 million partnership led by Duke University and VentureWell, with 5 other industry leaders to accelerate and scale Saving Lives at Birth innovations.

VIA Global Health has been partnering with innovators as well as actively promoting and distributing health innovations since its inception in 2015. Since then hundreds of innovators, distributors and development organizations have helped make VIA “the place to buy global health innovation.”

With this additional funding VIA will actively work with the next generation of innovators to assist them with market research, assessing demand and need, finding price points and developing feature sets that are important to the medical communities in their markets.

“This project is core to what VIA Global Health is all about – making sure that throughout the world, the necessary and appropriate health technology is available to medical professionals in an efficient and cost-effective manner. With this funding, VIA is able to provide market data that previously was not available, leveraging our platform to ensure a scalable solution that taps local stakeholder feedback and insights, ensuring these innovations are appropriate before they enter the commercialization phase.” said VIA’s CEO Noah Perin.

Brinnon Mandel, VIA’s Vice President of Market Insights, added, “as previous Saving Lives at Birth grant recipients, the VIA team has first-hand knowledge of the challenges innovators face bringing critical new interventions to market. We cannot wait to further engage with both our partners and innovators to assist in scaling these impactful innovations and ensuring they make it into the hands of people that need them most.”

VIA Global Health is reinventing the global healthcare supply chain with a vision to scale health innovation to the 6 billion people living in emerging economies. Leveraging our e-commerce and logistics platform, VIA connects global healthcare equipment suppliers to a network of verified local distributors – with a mission to create universal access to the tools that enable quality healthcare. For media inquiries please email press@viaglobalhealth.com