Across the world in 2019, UNICEF reports that over 2.4 million infants died in their first month of life, the vast majority in the developing world.
The situation in sub-Saharan Africa is particularly dire: an infant born in that region is 10 times more likely to die during its first month of life than a child born in a high-income country. Most of these deaths are preventable.
It was statistics like these that inspired biomedical engineers Sona Shah and Teresa Cauvel to found Neopenda in 2015.
Neopenda, a Cisco social entrepreneurship prize winner, is a social enterprise that develops innovative technologies for health systems in underserved populations.