Hege Ersdal demonstrates part of the Safer Births Bundle of Care to Dr Natalia Kanem, Executive Director in UNFPA and Anne Beate Tvinnereim, Norwegian Minister of Foreign Aid, at a recent symposium in Stavanger.
In 2020 the Safer Births Bundle of Care (SBBC) was rated with the highest score among 320 proposals submitted in response to the GFF Innovation-to-Scale call.
As a result, the program became one of five recipients of a grant of 4,5 million USD, enabling the scale up to 30 district hospitals in five regions with the highest perinatal mortality in Tanzania.
The early results from the implementation of the program are very encouraging and on track with the objectives to help reduce newborn mortality by 50%, stillborn deaths by 25%, and maternal mortality by 10%.
On this basis, and with strong interest from the Tanzanian Ministry of Health, GFF last week decided to award a further 8,5 million USD to enable full scale up to all 100+ district hospitals in these five regions.
This represents a strong endorsement of the program by both GFF and the MoH and will give the implementation of the Safer Births much-added visibility.
If these early results are maintained, this could pave the road for full national scale-up with the potential of saving in excess of 25,000 lives per year in Tanzania alone.
This would again set a strong case example for investment cases by the World Bank in a number of other 36 GFF low-resource countries.