Global health partnerships: building multi-national collaborations to achieve lasting improvements in maternal and neonatal health

Abstract Background In response to health care challenges worldwide, extensive funding has been channeled to the world’s most vulnerable health systems. Funding alone is not sufficient to address the complex issues and challenges plaguing these health systems. To see lasting improvement in maternal and infant health outcomes in the developing world, a global commitment to the sharing of knowledge and resources through international partnerships is critical. But partnerships that merely introduce western medical techniques and protocols to low resource settings, without heeding the local contexts, are misguided and unsustainable. Forming partnerships with mutual respect, shared vision, and collaborative effort is needed to ensure that all parties, irrespective of whether they belong to resource rich or resource poor settings, learn from each other so that meaningful and sustained system strengthening can take place. Methods In this paper, we describe the partnership building model of an international NGO, Kybele, which is committed to achieving childbirth safety through sustained partnerships in low resource settings. The Kybele model adapts generic stages of successful partnerships documented in the literature to four principles relevant to Kybele’s work. A multiple-case study approach is used to demonstrate how the model is applied in different country settings. Results The four principle of Kybele’s partnership model are robust drivers of successful partnerships in diverse country settings. Conclusions Much has been written about the need for multi-country partnerships to achieve sustainable outcomes in global health, but few papers in the literature describe how this has been achieved in practice. A strong champion, support and engagement of stakeholders, co-creation of solutions with partners, and involvement of partners in the delivery of solutions are all requirements for successful and sustained partnerships

Microbial hosts as a promising platform for polyphenol production

Plants synthesize a variety of different secondary metabolites, such as polyphenols, terpenoids, alkaloids, etc., with pharmaceutical and nutraceutical importance. Polyphenols have shown numerous health benefits with rare side effects. However, the extraction of these compounds from natural sources cannot meet the increasing consumer demand for natural products, and its purification is often difficult, making the overall process too expensive. In contrast, microbial production of polyphenols is a powerful alternative to produce natural products in large amounts, in an environmentally sustainable way. Nevertheless, plant-derived polyphenols are not naturally produced by microorganisms and therefore require the integration of the heterologous pathway from plants through genetic engineering techniques. In the present chapter, the recent advances in microbial production of plant-derived polyphenols, emphasizing on flavonoids, anthocyanins, curcuminoids, and stilbenes, have been summarized. In addition, different strategies used to increase the product yield, and the production processes are also highlighted.We would like to thank the European Union Framework Program 7 “BacHBerry” (www.bachberry.eu), Project No. FP7- 613793 for financial support, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/ BIO/04469 unit, COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684), and BiotecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020–Programa Operacional Regional do Norte.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio