By: Abby Sugrue and Laura Rodriguez, USAID
We were rummaging through historic USAID materials in the basement of the Ronald Reagan Building and found this photo of a young nurse and a baby. We couldn’t find a project name, date, title, or country – just “USAID” scrawled in pencil on the back. Still, the image stayed with us, especially as we were preparing to commemorate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day.
This week USAID, along with the Government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, and The World Bank launched Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development, to seek innovative prevention and treatment approaches for pregnant women and newborns in rural, low-resource settings. Saving lives at birth is one of the most critical challenges we face in developing countries. Finding new technologies, such as low-cost infant resuscitation devices or incubators, and new approaches to improve birth outcomes for mothers and newborns would not only alleviate suffering, but would also have a significant impact on public health and economic productivity.
In honor of maternal and child health workers around the world who are saving lives, we hope you enjoy this photo.
This photo of a nurse feeding a newborn was recently found in archived USAID materials.
