Our co-founder, Dr. Véronique Thouvenot, was interviewed by Antonella Mariani for an article in the leading Italian Catholic newspaper, Avvenire, to share her story and mission for Zero Mothers Die!

​Haati Takkallee Lubbuu kenuuf lubbuu dhabuu hin qabdu!

In 2018, the Zero Mothers Die App was launched with a translation to Afaan Oromo thanks to the collaboration with our partners at Gambo Rural Hospital in Ethiopia and Dr. Iñaki Alegria. Since then, the ZMD App has been used by over 170 healthcare workers and thousands of pregnant women. 

The main goal of the ZMD app is to reduce preventable causes of maternal and perinatal mortality. The regular monitoring of women’s pregnancy is necessary to allow their correct treatment, to recommend delivery under professional care, and for the identification of women under risk of complications during birth. The ZMD App helps bridge the gap of skilled healthcare workers in under-served health centers in rural communities of Ethiopia.

Gambo Hospital health workers translated the ZMD App content to Afaan Oromo and started the implementation in Gambo Hospital, 10 health centers, 50 health posts and the catchment area. In parallel, training was performed of rural health care workers in «Helping Babies Survive Training», including «Helping Babies Breathe» and «Essential Care for Newborns» to reduce the development of neurological diseases in newborns and ensure their appropriate treatment in the fragile stages of life after birth. ​

Maternal, Newborn and Child Health is a key national health priority for Ethiopia. The current aim is to expand the implementation of ZMD in different regions of Ethiopia with the support of the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health. 
 
Unfortunately, Ethiopia’s maternal mortality rate is still very high. It’s estimated to be around 412 mothers deceased for every 100,000 live births, which means around 11,000 maternal deaths per year. Regarding newborns, 46 die before 28 days of life for every 1000 births, which means around 87000 neonatal deaths and 97,000 stillbirths per year. Most of these are avoidable and preventable deaths.
​

The three delays model proposes that maternal mortality is associated with delays in: 1) deciding to seek care; 2) reaching the healthcare facility; and 3) receiving care. To avoid preventable deaths, the following actions took place, and some of them continue today:

• Translation and adaptation of ZMD App contents to Afaan Oromo, and subsequent training and implementation of the ZMD App in the Gambo region. 
• Trainings performed in Gambo Rural Hospital on Helping to Save Lives at Birth for Nurses and Midwives from the 10 health centers in Gambo’s catchment area (Training on ).
• Moreover, a training was performed on Helping Mothers Survive and Helping Babies Breathe (Birth Asphyxia is the main cause of perinatal death, and Postpartum Hemorrhage is the first cause of maternal death). The training was based on simulation scenarios with training material. The main objective was to improve the professional skills to manage the main causes of maternal and perinatal death with the main objective of reducing mortality rates.  

After two years of implementation of the Maternal and Neonatal Program and Zero Mothers Die App, the results and outcomes are: 

• 172 health workers trained
• 30,401 pregnant women attended Ante Natal Care Services
• 8,768 deliveries attended by qualified midwives and Post Natal Care Program

So how exactly is the ZMD App helping to achieve Ethiopia's goals of decreasing maternal and neonatal mortality? According to testimonials by the healthcare workers at Gambo Hospital, the ZMD App is facilitating:

The ZMD App 2.0 is now available in Afaan Oromo with new content and features, be sure to check it out! It's available both for Android and iOS, and in 9 languages! We hope the new features continue to support the health care workers, pregnant women and new mothers in Ethiopia and all over the world. A big thank you to the Gambo Rural Hospital and Dr. Iñaki Alegria for their dedication to bring the Zero Mothers Die initiative to Ethiopia!

On Thursday April 22nd, Dr. Veronique Thouvenot presented the global initiative of Zero Mothers Die at the Conference on Innovation for Maternal and Child Health of the Rotary Club of Saint Raphaël. It was an exciting opportunity to share how Zero Mothers Die initiatives are being deployed around the world in countries such as Nigeria, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Brazil, Peru, and more, and how each implementation of ZMD is adapted and tailored to the specific contexts and needs of the pregnant women, new mothers and healthcare  workers on the ground. Thank you to the Rotary Club for the wonderful opportunity to share our work with your members and the offers of collaborations received! We look forward to taking these forward.

Este miércoles en La Nube hablamos con Veronique Inés Thouvenot, cofundadora y directora científica de la Fundación Millennia2025 'Mujeres e Innovación', quien nos habla sobre la iniciativa 'Zero Mothers Die'.
Escuche la entrevista completa de La Nube en el audio adjunto:

 Today, in honor of the International Women’s Day, we are happy to announce the launch of the Zero Mothers Die 2.0 App ! Completely rebuilt from the ground up, the new ZMD 2.0 App offers cross-platform access on iOS and Android, new content personalization features and a whole new user-friendly design putting critical maternal and newborn healthcare information truly at your fingertips.

​Our goal however remains the same since the start: to empower women throughout their pregnancy and motherhood and help reduce maternal and newborn mortality around the world.

We're also excited to share that the new ZMD 2.0 App has been designed, co-created and developed by women, for women! A big thank you to our wonderful design and development team at UniversalDoctor at the Barcelona Health Hub --> Elsa, Miriam, Jeannine, Laura M., Laura B. and Korinna, and to the Millennia2025 Foundation Women and Innovation for the financial support.

As a healthcare worker, you can browse instructional videos, and online courses for yourself and your patients, among other resources. Finally, if you’re neither of those profiles, don’t worry! You can always just browse information throughout the app!
​

And no matter which profile you have, you can always click the top left corner to open the menu and change your profile, learn more about the app, contact us, and more.

Join us in celebrating International Women's Day and download or recommend the new Zero Mothers Die 2.0 App -- we look forward to your feedback and user stories! To partner with us to build a custom ZMD App for your community project, contact us.
​

The Zero Mothers Die App, or ZMD App, is a source of essential maternal, newborn and child health information for pregnant women, new mothers and health workers who provide this care to their community.

~ FOR PREGNANT WOMEN & NEW MOTHERS ~

The app features important information, advice and tips organized according to the stage of pregnancy and age of newborn to help ensure both mother and baby are safe and healthy.

~ FOR HEALTH WORKERS ~

The app provides access to a unique mix of instructional training videos, online courses, patient education materials and other multimedia resources to help improve the capacity of health workers to deliver effective maternal, newborn and child care to their communities.

The app has been developed by the Zero Mothers Die global partnership initiative, which seeks to deploy mobile technology solutions to reduce maternal and newborn mortality across the globe.

The Health Worker content is sourced from ORB by mPowering, an impressive library of mobile-optimized multimedia content for the training of health workers in maternal, newborn and child health issues.

Zero Mothers Die is a partnership initiative by Advanced Development for Africa, Millennia2025 Foundation, UniversalDoctor, Global Partnership Forum, UNAIDS, Airtel and other key partners.

On 30 June 2020, Giving Women brought together a diverse panel of organisations and experts active in the arena of maternal health, joined by Dr. Véronique Thouvenot, co-founder of Zero Mothers Die, to discuss the important work that all these organisations are carrying out to safeguard maternal health and how their programming has been impacted in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. 
​
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone globally, and this global crisis is particularly affecting segments of the population and social groups in the most vulnerable situations, including those living in poverty and without access to high quality preventive and curative health services. Evidence is showing that as health systems continue to prepare to address the first, and subsequent waves of the virus, health service delivery for other crucial health care needs may be impacted, as a result of shifting commitments and priorities – including maternal health services. The speakers on this panel present interventions and models supported by their organizations in area of maternal health, how this programming has been impacted in the wake of the pandemic, and how they are adapting to continue to support maternal health for vulnerable populations.

Panelists:
​
➤ Carina Barreto, Coordinator at Casa Angela, Brazil
➤ Emma France, Global Development and Strategic Engagement Director at Mothers2Mothers, Sub-Saharan Africa
➤ Corinne Namblard, Advisory Board Member of HelpMum, Nigeria
➤ Constance Theisen, Head of international Programmes at Médecins du Monde, International

The Panel was moderated by Kelsi Kriitmaa, Executive Director at Philanthropy Advisors in Geneva and Giving Women member.

Watch the ​exciting panel discussion here:

A recent article in the Brazilian Journal of Mother and Child Health describes the cross-cultural adaptation of the Zero Mothers Die App for the Brazilian context by the Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Oswaldo Cruz Foundation) in Rio de Janeiro to contribute to the digital health approach for e-pregnant women-centered care in Brazil.
 
Although we live in an information and connected society, lack of access to verified information to prevent pregnancy complications continues to contribute to maternal deaths around the world, while the excess of unvalidated information, which has multiplied since the emergence of the internet, further aggravates the situation.
 
The Zero Mothers Die App (ZMD App) aims to tackle this issue by directly providing validated pre- and post-natal information directly to pregnant women and new mothers, localized to their language and cultural contexts by local healthcare professionals, and tailored according to their week of pregnancy or age of newborn to ensure relevancy of the information.
 
To bring the ZMD App to Brazil, the Instituto Nacional de Saúde da Mulher, da Criança e do Adolescente Fernandes Figueira (Fernandes Figueira National Institute of Woman, Child and Adolescent Health), a public reference hospital for medium and high complexity/high fetal risk pregnancies, performed a cross-cultural adaptation of the ZMD App and a qualitative study on this adaptation.

​The study was performed by a multidisciplinary research group composed of thirteen researchers: a pharmacist, a food engineer, a physiotherapist, a pediatrician, an obstetrician, a pediatric surgeon, a psychologist, a journalist, and nursing and health worker residents. Among them there were five PhD professionals, one doctoral candidate, and six were acting as preceptors in the residency courses at the hospital. The study also comprised an evaluation of the “e-pregnant woman”, their informational needs for the quality of life of both mother and baby, their installation and use of the ZMD App, which used a Grounded Theory approach. The adaptation and study ran from November 2017 to December 2018, during which data collection took place during 5 months across 109 pregnant women and mothers that agreed to download the ZMD App.

We are honored that Dr. Veronique Thouvenot, as co-founder of Zero Mothers Die, was selected as one of the 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world for 2019 as part of BBC's 100 Women initiative, alongside other female leaders, such as Greta Thunberg, who are driving change on behalf of women worldwide. 

BBC held two international Future Conferences to bring together women who are experts in their fields - female futurists working at the cutting edge of science, arts, media, economics, education, fashion, religion, identity and many other areas.

Zero Mothers Die was invited to present at the BBC 100 Women: The Female Future conference in London by Dr Thouvenot who shared our vision of what life could look like in 2030 - getting maternal mortality to zero!

BBC asked how technology can be used to combat maternal mortality, and Zero Mothers Die was presented as a key initiative in this space thanks to the Zero Mothers Die App, which offers localized and contextualized information for pregnant women at every stage of their pregnancy. Our vision is to reach ZERO mothers dying by 2030, as this is the only acceptable figure for maternal mortality.

The Medical Futurist is at the forefront in helping patients, physicians, policy makers and governments understand how digital health is shaping healthcare, featuring the latest in cutting edge healthcare technology. Zero Mothers Die is honored to have been featured in their Newsletter Special recently!

Click below to read the Special Edition of The Medical Futurist Newsletter featuring the Zero Mothers Die App!