Backgrounder - Canada’s partnership with Grand Challenges Canada to support sustainable innovations

On World Health Day, April 7, the Honourable Karina Gould, Minister of International Development, announced that the Government of Canada is renewing its partnership with Grand Challenges Canada to support innovative solutions that improve global health.

Grand Challenges Canada is an important partner for supporting innovators around the world. By providing innovators with the funding and the networks they need to source new ideas or to transition to scale, Grand Challenges Canada enables them to implement sustainable solutions for global health and humanitarian challenges.

Innovative solutions that contribute to global health in a pandemic year

Also on World Health Day, Global Affairs Canada hosted a virtual dialogue with the Minister of International Development and Grand Challenges Canada to highlight 2 innovative projects contributing to global health in low- and middle-income countries.

Minister Gould was joined by Michael Hawkes, a pediatrician and infectious diseases specialist with the Department of Pediatrics in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Alberta. Dr. Hawkes and his team partnered with Global Health Uganda to develop the solar-powered oxygen delivery project. This innovation uses solar panels, a battery bank and an oxygen concentrator to deliver medical-grade oxygen in rural areas where reliable sources of energy are scarce. Since its first pilot project, solar-powered oxygen has expanded to 20 more sites across Uganda and, most recently, to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia. Although solar-powered oxygen was originally developed to target childhood pneumonia, it has saved many children and adult lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eva Mwai, regional director for North Star Alliance, joined the discussion to showcase her organization’s Blue Box Roadside Wellness Centres, an innovation that helps thousands of women in Kenya access sexual and reproductive health and rights services. North Star Alliance relies on social innovation rather than technology to deliver public health services to sex workers. Blue-coloured converted shipping containers are strategically placed in high-traffic locations to serve as roadside clinics with a dual purpose: distribute essential health supplies and provide educational services. Since the pandemic, Blue Box clinics have further supported sex workers by supplying them with face masks and information on the coronavirus to keep them safer.

Global Affairs Canada is pleased with the emergence of initiatives such as the solar-powered oxygen delivery project and the Blue Box Roadside Wellness Centres. Through innovations like these, supported by Grand Challenges Canada, Canada is on the right path to meet its global health goals.