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Seven projects on three continents designed and tested innovative ways of using eHealth to reach those with the greatest need: vulnerable women and children.

An innovative mHealth project brings vital pregnancy and childcare information to ethnic minority women in Vietnam who are isolated from mainstream health services.

An integrated eHealth platform will now link Peru’s fragmented healthcare information system. A lifesaver for women and children, WawaRed will also improve health planning and policy.

Although digital technologies hold great promise for increasing access to healthcare, this potential is largely untapped in Bangladesh.

Despite high mobile phone penetration in Kenya and the proliferation of eHealth programs, healthcare remains largely inaccessible outside major cities. Research funded by IDRC is now feeding into national policies to ensure greater health equity.

Mobile phones could boost the health of Ethiopia’s underserved rural population. They also promise to enhance the skills and reputation of health extension workers, who are linchpins of the country’s health system.

Armed with knowledge, netbooks, and mobile phones, health workers are tackling chronic diseases among underserved populations in Lebanon.

A mHealth project reaches the most vulnerable populations in Burkina Faso: mothers, babies, and people living with HIV.

In 2010, some 40,000 Nigerian women died in childbirth — 14% of the world’s total maternal deaths. In many rural areas, women and girls marry young and put in long hours of gruelling domestic labour — grinding meal, fetching firewood and water, tilling and selling crops — well into late stages of pregnancy.

In India’s Karnataka state, girls and women face many barriers stemming from their low social status that are exacerbated by poverty and caste.

Despite recent progress, as a region, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of maternal, infant, and child mortality in the world. From 2009 to 2012, researchers led by Niger’s Laboratoire d'études et de recherches sur les dynamiques sociales et le développement local (LASDEL) analyzed government efforts in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger to increase access to health care by removing user fees.

The voices and experience of developing country researchers are too often missing when international donors and decision-makers gather to address global health issues. Strengthening capacity and creating space for Southern expertise is one of IDRC’s most important contributions.

In the 1980s, with advice from international organizations, most African countries adopted direct payment for health services as the primary means to finance their health systems. Patients had to pay for health services out-of-pocket, severely hindering access to services for the most vulnerable. New recommendations in the 2000s called for African countries to offer subsidies or abolish payments for certain health services and groups. Until now, the impacts of these reforms in francophone West Africa have not been documented.