Canada can help us develop affordable innovations in child care: Minister

 The Dollar Business Bureau Developing affordable innovations to mitigate disease burden is a major challenge for India and partnering Canada allows us to tap into our combined capacity and strength to find solutions for disease control and improved maternal and child care, said Dr Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for Science & Technology & Earth Sciences, reported a PIB release. The Minister was reacting after the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India entered into a partnership with Grand Challenges Canada (GCC), funded by the Government of Canada to partner and invest US$ 2.5 million in health innovations in India. The innovations will be focusing on maternal, new born and child health and Visceral Leishmaniasis elimination. While maternal, newborn and child health is a major challenge for the Government of India and Canada’s flagship development priority, India is one of the six countries that bear 90% of the global burden of Visceral Leishmaniasis. DBT and GCC will be supporting two innovative approaches to promote healthy brain development --pairing private resources with the Anganwadi programme and Kangaroo Mother Care for low birth weight infants in communities. Two ‘proof of concept’ projects will be jointly funded by DBT and GCC. One of them is a community-based model of Kangaroo Mother Care for improving child survival and brain development in Low Birth Weight newborns. Saving Brains is an initiative that promotes the fulfillment of human capital potential by focusing on interventions that nurture healthy child and brain development in the first 1,000 days of life so children can reach their full potential. The other is implementation of the International Guide for Monitoring Child Development (IGMCD), an individualised technology-aided approach to promoting early childhood development in a low income setting in Mumbai.    

This article was published on April 18, 2015 – 6:49 pm IST.