Muzalema Mwanza   

Locally produced protection equipment to improve maternity care

As a result of the highly infectious nature of the COVID-19 virus, obstetric care providers have to reinvent maternity care in real-time to prevent transmissions. The global supply chains for essential products have been affected, increasing the price of foreign-sourced personal protective equipment. Which is why Safe Motherhood Alliance is bridging this gap through the local manufacture of the essential face masks and safety visors needed to reduce the transmission of the COVID-19 virus.  Ensuring the continuity of primary healthcare services, limiting health worker infections, and eliminating transmission from known cases. 

Muzalema Mwanza

Entrepreneur Name: Muzalema Mwanza, Ashoka Fellow   

Organization:  Safe Motherhood Alliance 

Country: Zambia 

Website: safemotherhood-alliance.com 

Field of action: Frontline Health Response

Needs support to achieve greater impact in: Fundraising, Technical Digital Expertise 

The mission of the social enterprise before and after Coronavirus

Safe Motherhood Alliance is reducing neonatal and maternal mortality in Zambia by positioning Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) as the drivers of standardized and quality care at the point of birth.  

Safe Motherhood Alliance ensures that TBAs become skilled practitioners so that they ensure safe births.  They address three of the drivers of maternal mortality – lack of information, lack of access to health clinics, and use of non-sterile supplies.  

Due to COVID-19 being highly infectious, obstetric care providers have to reinvent maternity care in real-time to prevent transmissions. Many pregnant women are now facing impossible restrictions and a shortage of essential products and medication. Prices of imported essential products have substantially increased. Safe Motherhood Alliance is now developing innovations to address the challenges of health inequalities, improving healthcare access and balancing quality care with affordability. 

Recent country measures in response to the pandemic have made pregnant women face impossible decisions due to imposed travel restrictions combined with PPE shortages for midwives and birth attendants to protect them from covid-19 while doing their work, with impact felt immediately as they are cut off from the communities that rely on them for deliveries and postpartum support. Without adequate health systems to respond to the crisis we will see a surge in the number of maternal mortality rates increase. 

Safe Motherhood Alliance manufactures critical personal protective equipment (PPE) such as 3D printed face masks and face shield visors needed for safety measures of frontline workers, pregnant women and children living in Zambia. They also provide safe, affordable, comprehensive delivery kits and the provision of simple lifesaving solutions. Their basic delivery kit is an inexpensive, simple kit designed to help create a clean birthing environment, particularly for home births.

Safe Motherhood Alliance is on a mission to:

  • Manufacture and distribute 30 000 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for traditional birth attendants and frontline health workers and pregnant women to reduce the spread of COVID-19 virus.
  • Train 100 traditional birth attendants and frontline health workers on safety protocols and proper use/disposal of the PPE.
  • Directly impact communities and expectant mothers by ensuring that they give birth in safe and sterile conditions during this pandemic.

They are working with a network of traditional birth attendants to provide contact tracing for public health officials in communities for those who test positive for COVID-19, especially in pregnant women. As such, they are ensuring that pregnant women do not compromise their own safety and that of their newborns in under-resourced settings as well as within their own homes.

Create the post-COVID world. 

Help Muzalema and her team develop their solution!

Safe Motherhood Alliance‘s concrete needs facing Covid-19:

  • Digital expertise: to build a digital platform with a data-base of traditional birth attendants and health facilities in under-resource settings that can provide reminder (e.g. mobile SMS reminders) and prompts for use of PPE and can be used for contact-tracing and create an online platform that can be used to sell products online due to the lockdown and travel restrictions, customers can order products and have them delivered to them.
  • Marketing and communications: to mobilize expertise to market their medical products and communicate the bigger objectives to ensure the continuity of primary healthcare services, limiting health worker infections, and eliminating transmission from known cases.
  • Administrative and HR expertise: to improve operations of manufacturing 3D printed medical supplies and create standard operating procedures that will be accepted in the region and support in training and onboarding of new staff members to become distribution agents of products.
  • Business Planning: to create a business plan that integrates innovative strategies to ensure quality, affordability, and scalability by involving local communities in supply chains, catalyse local manufacturing processes and training women from poor communities to function as frontline health workers we distribute essential medical supplies.
  • Funding and Financing: to secure funds (target: 150 000 USD) to scale up the manufacturing and distribution of personal protective equipment such as 3D printed face masks and face shield visors.
SUPPORT