GSK and Save the Children offer $1m award for child healthcare innovation
Howard Lake | 4 July 2014 | News
Pharmaceutical and healthcare company GSK together with Save the Children are for the second year running offering a $1 million award for healthcare innovations in developing countries that will reduce child deaths.
The Healthcare Innovation Award is part of a partnership between the two organisations which aims to save the lives of a million of the world’s poorest children.
How to enter
Organisations from across the developing world are invited to nominate examples of innovative healthcare approaches that they have discovered or implemented. These must have resulted in tangible improvements to under-5 child survival rates, be sustainable and have the potential to be scaled-up and replicated.
Innovative approaches that are eiligible can focus on any aspect of healthcare, including science, nutrition, research, education or partnership working.
This year, entries are particularly encouraged from organisations whose work aims to increase the quality of, or access to, healthcare for newborns.
Entries must come from a country classified as ‘low’, ‘lower-middle’, or ‘upper-middle’ income by the World Bank, and not from the European Union.
Entries to the Healthcare Innovation Award are open from 27 June to 25 August 2014. Winners will be announced in December 2014.
2013 winner
The winner of the inaugural award was Friends of Sick Children (FOSC), Malawi, for their ‘bubble’ Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) kit. This helps babies that are in respiratory distress, often caused by acute infections like pneumonia, by keeping their lungs inflated so they can breathe more easily.
FOSC received an award of $400,000, and backing from the Ministry of Health in Malawi, which has enabled them to share this technology with teaching hospitals in Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa.
Sir Andrew Witty, CEO of GSK said:
Advertisement
“We are committed to working in partnership with other organisations and our work with Save the Children is a great example of how we can use our scientific expertise and reach to help improve health outcomes for people around the world. As a direct result of this award last year’s winners have already had a tremendous impact and we want to continue to support them as they develop innovations that can be scaled-up and replicated to help reduce child deaths in the world’s poorest countries.”
The Healthcare Innovation Award was announced following the launch of GSK and Save the Children’s partnership in May 2013. It goes beyond many traditional corporate charity partnerships. For example, Save the Children is involved in helping GSK to research and develop child-friendly medicines, with a seat on a new paediatric R&D board to accelerate progress on innovative life-saving interventions for under-fives.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.