“Helping save lives” has been the mission of Laerdal since the introduction of modern resuscitation techniques around 1960. This mission is shared by the Laerdal Foundation for Acute Medicine, which since it was established in 1980 has provided financial support to over 1,000 practically oriented research projects
About 2/3 of all the cases where effectively performed CPR could have saved life – or prevented disability – occur in developing countries. Expressing this as potential life years saved brings this proportion to well over 90% - as most preventable deaths in developing countries are in those under 5 years old :
The UN Millennium Development Goals have given infant/child and maternal mortality a historic attention:
MDG 4: Reduction of child < 5yr mortality rate by 67 %; from a total of about 13 million deaths in 1990 to about 5 million in 2015, and
MDG 5: Reduction of maternal mortality rate by 75 % ; from a total of about 500,000 deaths in 1990 to about 125,000 in 2015.
However, with only five of the 25 years of the measure period 1990-2015 remaining, only about half of MDG 4 and MDG 5 have been achieved. New, innovative approaches are required – in particular relating to life saving interventionson the day of birth, and in rural areas. This requires not only training of about 2.5 million current birth attendants to be more efficient, but also scaling up the number of trained birth attendants, as well as giving them access to new, simple and low-cost equipment.
The “Helping Babies Breathe” (HBB) project was successfully launched at the Global Health Conference in Washington in June 2010, following two years of development and pilot testing of the educational materials in five countries. To date an estimated 1,500 master trainers have been trained. Roll out plans for HBB are about to be established in over 20 countries, and the educational materials are under translation into several languages.
A Global Development Alliance has been formed for the sole purpose of helping implement the HBB project, with USAID, The National Institute for Child Health Development, Save the Children, Laerdal and the American Association of Pediatrics as alliance partners.
The International Pediatric Association (IPA), has – as a contribution to the UN Secretary General’s mobilization for the last five years of the MDGs – made the following pledge:
“The IPA member organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America are joining with the Global Development Alliance (AAP, USAID, Save the Children, MCHIP and Laerdal Corporation) to help train more than 1 million providers in neonatal resuscitation and essential newborn care.”
Furthermore, Laerdal and Jhpiego, a charity affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA, have recently established a collaboration to develop course material for
Helping Mothers Deliver (HMD working title), based on the same educational structure as the HBB course using MamaNatalie as a training tool. This project will focus on control of post partum hemorrhage, which is the direct cause of an estimated 120,000 maternal deaths per year. Jhpiego is currently field testing MamaNatalie in Tanzania, Ethiopia and India. MamaNatalie will be launched at the Africa Regional Meeting in Addis Ababa end Februruary,and will be in regular production as from April 2011.
Helping Babies Breathe was subject to special presentations at the Global Health Summit and the Pacific Health Summits in June. MamaNatalie was part of a panel on extremely affordable tools at the Global Maternal Conference in Delhi in Sepember.
3. Laerdal Global Health
Goals
The following goals have been established for the new company to achieve by 2015:
Qualitative
Helping as many developing countries as possible achieve MDG 4 and 5
Quantitative
Through a portfolio of 12-15 innovative products, help train and equip at least 1 million birth attendants in HBB and HMD, thereby helping save > 250,000 lives per year
Financial
Annual revenue of USD 10 mill
Sufficient gross profit for the company to sustain its further development
Priority Countries
The UN MDGs apply to 68 developing countries. According to the latest Countdown report from September 2010( ref 2) only around 15 of these countries are on shedule to achieve MDG 4 and MDG 5. Close to half of the infant, child and maternal deaths occur in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. These countries generally also show the weakest trends relative to achieving the MDGs.
It will be the goal of Laerdal Global Health to help as many as possible developing countries reach the MDGs. Initially, the focus will be on 4-6 countries that are considered to be good candidates for setting good examples already by 2010-2013, in order to stimulate implementation in additional countries.
The main criteria for selecting focus countries will be the commitment by their health authorities to achieving MDGs 4 and 5 through integrated national plans for Basic Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (BEmONC), including:
training the current birth attendants (typically nurses and midwives)
equipping those being trained with appropriate life saving tools
scaling up the number of birth attendants
having plans to reach the rural areas (where typically ¾ of the population live)
committing to sustaining the programs through monitoring and evaluation
Based on these criteria, Laerdal Global Health will initially focus on. Tanzania, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and selected states in India. 1-2 additional countries may be added to this list.
Organization
Laerdal Global Health has been established as an independent sister company to Laerdal Medical. It will operate at “arm’s length” to Laerdal Medical with full transparency of the financial records. Laerdal Medical is expected to become a distributor of certain of the new company’s products in developed countries.
Laerdal Global Health will have a lean organization, estimated to be around 20 people. It will be headed by Tore Laerdal as managing director, and Ingrid Laerdal as assisting director. The staff is partly expected to be based in Stavanger, partly in China, and on a project basis with various alliance partners in India, Africa and the US.
