PATH and Laerdal Global Health to accelerate global access to an innovative feeding cup for preterm and high-risk newborns

Kate Davidson, PATH, media@path.org, 206.302.4637.

Copenhagen, May 17, 2016–PATH and Laerdal Global Health announced today at the Women Deliver Global Conference that they will collaborate to bring a feeding cup to market based on a reference design co-developed by PATH, the University of Washington School of Dentistry, and the Craniofacial Center at Seattle Children's Hospital, thereby ensuring an innovative feeding option for the 7.6 million preterm infants in Africa and Asia who have difficulty breastfeeding.

According to a recent article in The Lancet, the scaling up of breastfeeding to a near-universal level could prevent 823,000 deaths annually of children younger than five years of age. The World Health Organization and United Nations Children's Fund recommend hand expression of breast milk and the use of a small cup to feed newborns with breastfeeding difficulties in developing countries.

The reference design, known in the global health community as the NIFTY cup, benefits from five years of user-focused design to ensure that products based on the design are simple to use, easy to clean, and appropriate for feeding infants who have difficulty breastfeeding. The Nifty Feeding Cup by Laerdal is a simple, lifesaving technology that builds on the NIFTY cup reference design. The 40-mL cup incorporates special design features such as a unique reservoir and flow channels that allow infants to lap or sip breast milk at their own pace. The cup helps increase optimal milk intake in the shortest time, with minimal spillage, and allows women to express breast milk directly into the same soft silicone cup the infant uses.

"Our solution addresses a huge unmet need and we are excited to work with Laerdal Global Health to produce a safe, high-quality, inexpensive product that hospitals and families can use to feed breast milk to infants in the places where good nutrition can make all the difference between life and death," says Dr. Patricia S. Coffey, leader of the Health Technologies for Women and Children Group at PATH.

PATH, the leader in global health innovation, and Laerdal Global Health, a not-for-profit company that develops durable, simple, culturally adaptable, affordable products and programs, share the mission of saving lives of infants and mothers in low-resource countries.

Laerdal Global Health has significant experience producing high-volume, low-cost, high-quality molded silicone medical products, and will manufacture and distribute the Nifty Feeding Cup by Laerdal as a tool to complement the Essential Care for Every Baby and Essential Care for Small Babies programs, two new essential newborn care and small baby training programs for low-resource settings (http://www.laerdalglobalhealth.com/nav/2536/Helping-Babies-Survive).

"We are thrilled to partner with PATH in bringing this new Laerdal product to market, and believe this will be a very important addition to our other initiatives to promote exclusive breastfeeding and care for small babies," says Tore Laerdal, Managing Director of Laerdal Global Health.

Information on availability and expected price can be found at http://www.laerdalglobalhealth.com/.

Laerdal Global Health is a not-for-profit company that develops durable, simple, culturally adaptable, affordable products and programs aimed at helping save lives of newborns and mothers in low-resource countries. Laerdal Global Health is based in Norway, India, and China, and works in multidisciplinary teams, in close interactions with experts and users to understand needs and to create solutions for helping save lives. Learn more at http://www.laerdalglobalhealth.com/.