About Us
Reducing maternal and newborn deaths is a priority for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, implementing the UN Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health, and executing the Strategies Toward Ending Preventable Maternal Mortality (EPMM). However, the third most common direct cause of maternal mortality is maternal sepsis, and yet it receives less attention, research, and programming.
In early 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Jhpiego (an affiliate of The Johns Hopkins University) launched the Global Maternal and Neonatal Sepsis Initiative with a goal to accelerate the reduction of preventable maternal and neonatal deaths related to sepsis. The Initiative aims to foster alignment, collaboration, research, innovation and advocacy to stop sepsis in its tracks.
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The STOP SEPSIS campaign is an important first activity of the Initiative to mobilize healthcare providers and build awareness for the prevention, detection and treatment of sepsis. The first phase of the campaign will culminate with the Global Maternal and Neonatal Sepsis Study — GLOSS — a research effort that aims to effectively estimate the burden of maternal and neonatal sepsis in approximately 50 countries around the world.
About WHO
Our goal is to build a better, healthier future for people all over the world. Working through offices in more than 150 countries, WHO staff work side by side with governments and other partners to ensure the highest attainable level of health for all people. Together we strive to combat diseases — infectious diseases like influenza and HIV and noncommunicable ones like cancer and heart disease. We help mothers and children survive and thrive so they can look forward to a healthy old age. We ensure the safety of the air people breathe, the food they eat, the water they drink — and the medicines and vaccines they need.
About Jhpiego
Jhpiego (pronounced “ja-pie-go”) is an international, non-profit health organization affiliated with Johns Hopkins University. For 42 years, Jhpiego has empowered front-line health workers by designing and implementing effective, low-cost, hands-on solutions to strengthen the delivery of health care services for women and their families.
About the Study – GLOSS
Combatting maternal and neonatal sepsis will save lives and directly contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 3 to “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.” But the true burden of maternal and neonatal sepsis is presently unknown, owing to a lack of data, especially from low-income countries.
GLOSS, the Global Maternal and Neonatal Sepsis Study, aims to help provide the evidence base that will help to quantify the true burden and assess the current management of maternal and neonatal sepsis. The study will look at how women with infection during pregnancy, childbirth or postpartum, or post- abortion are identified and treated in participating hospitals. During the week of the study, a massive coordinated data collection effort will take place in hundreds of health facilities in approximately 50 countries and 500 healthcare facilities around the world. The new maternal sepsis definition and potential identification criteria will be tested and validated in this large global study. That effort will be followed by the implementation of other specific projects and programmes targeting the prevention and successful management of maternal and newborn sepsis.