[Won INDEX: AWARD 2013; in the Body Category Design, The Natalie Collection, a birth simulating learning kit facilitates interactive learning by providing practical hands-on training.]
Every day, 3,000 newborn babies die from birth asphyxia along with 1,000 birthing mothers. The enormity of this is stressed by the fact that it is included in no less than two of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
In addressing this – in very different and often impoverished communities in developing countries – Laerdal Global Health of Norway took a unique approach and combined industrial design with education when creating INDEX: Award 2013 Winner in the Body Category, The Natalie Collection, a birth simulating learning kit facilitates interactive learning by providing practical hands-on training.
The Natalie Collection thus offers a trio of needs-based, robust and extremely affordable devices and training solutions addressing just that: They are ‘NeoNatalie Suction’, ‘NeoNatalie Newborn Simulator’ and ‘MamaNatalie Birthing Simulator’ and are all designed to save thousands of lives. The Natalie Collection is a low-cost, practical, hands-on training kit for the most important and critical moment in life – when a baby is being born. The company behind it, Laerdal Global Health of Norway, has a great team of designers focusing to help low resource countries significantly to reduce infant, child and maternal mortality and this is a great example of how design can improve life conditions both locally and globally.
Use of award money
Laerdal Global Health will donate the €100,000 INDEX: Award prize money to the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) in support of distribution of the Helping Mothers Survive and Helping Babies Breathe training programs among its members in developing countries.
INDEX: Awards
The INDEX: award is “the biggest design award in the world worth €500,000, and widely recognized as the most important design award in the world.” The designs are chosen because they improve lives, addressing issues such as health, water, terrorism, sustainable transportation and care for the elderly.
INDEX: Award is awarded biennially in Denmark, under the attendance of HRH The Crown Price of Denmark, who is patron of INDEX: Design to Improve Life®. Since 2005, INDEX: Award has received 3,600 nominations from more than 80 countries.
INDEX: Award is split into five categories: Body, Home, Work, Play and Community, representing the entire human life, inside to out. One prize worth €100,000 is presented to the winner in each of the categories.
Source: http://designtoimprovelife.dk/trio-of-life-saving-devices-reduce-childbirth-mortality/
