February 28, 2023
Makerere University Hospital is pleased to announce a multi-million-dollar contract received from Wellcome Leap’s In Utero program to implement a project to reduce stillbirth. The project is expected to develop novel clinical tools for use in diagnosing and managing high-risk pregnancies and reducing the burden of stillbirths in Uganda, sub-Saharan Africa, and globally.
The researchers steering this project from Makerere University include Dr. Sam Ali (principal investigator (PI)), Prof. Josaphat Byamugisha (co-PI) and Dr. Obondo J. Sande (co-PI).
From the Netherlands, the co-PIs include Associate Professors Kerstin Klipstein Grobusch and Marcus Rijken from University Medical Center Utrecht, Associate Professor Wessel Ganzevoort from Amsterdam University Medical Center, and Associate Professor Sanne Gordijn from University Medical Center Groningen.
Professor Aris Papageorghiou (co-PI) from the University of Oxford, United Kingdom and Dr Rose Mukisa Bisoborwa (co-PI) from White Ribbon Alliance Uganda join the group of seasoned scientists to implement the project.
The global partners bring great experience and expertise from diverse spheres cutting across maternal-fetal medicine, new ultrasound technologies, biomarker evaluation, and prediction modelling to the project.
Makerere University has developed a focused research agenda that is multi-disciplinary and draws on the University’s vast expertise as well as collaborations and partnerships. The University is always seeking to increase investment in research and has several ongoing research projects to contribute to the country’s development needs of the country and the globe.
This project is funded by Wellcome Leap, a US non-profit organization whose aim is to build and execute bold and unconventional programs to deliver breakthroughs in human health over 5-10 years. Untraditionally, all funded projects in the In Utero program work in synergy to reduce the individual and societal burden of stillbirth. The goal of the Wellcome Leap In Utero program is to create a scalable capacity to measure, model, and predict gestational development to reduce stillbirth rates by half without increasing provider-initiated delivery.
“We are immensely grateful to Wellcome Leap for the exceptional opportunity to contribute to this noble tenet of preventing stillbirths. This project is a one-of-a-kind investigation on how to prevent stillbirths from all important clinical dimensions. We truly believe that it will hugely impact global maternal-fetal health,” Dr. Sam Ali- the principal investigator said during the first project consortium meeting on 13 January 2023 at UMC Utrecht, The Netherlands.
