FREO2 awarded grant from 'Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development' event.

On the 27th of July, FREO2 team members travelled to Washington DC, to attend the Saving Lives at Birth Development Exchange. After a rigorous review process, FREO2 was one of four seed grantees to be awarded funding from 550 applicants.

The event itself aims to identify innovative solutions to protect and support mothers and newborns in a 48 hour window after giving birth; the period when both are most vulnerable. This is crucial, as there are 303,000 maternal deaths, 2.7 million neonatal deaths, and 2.6 million stillbirths every year worldwide. To this end, the development exchange brings together global entrepreneurs, to come up with cost effective and technical solutions to a global health problem.

This initiative is supported by USAID, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, The Korean International Cooperation Agency and the U.K's department for International Development. In total, Saving lives at Birth invested more than $7.3 million to foster and support groundbreaking technological solutions.