Canada and India Announce Funding for Innovations to Improve Child Health

Canada is putting its money where its mouth is, with a $2.5 million investment in five projects in India meant to help the country's poor, the Toronto Star reports.

"Many of these novel projects aim to improve maternal, newborn, and child health (known as 'MNCH'), which is Canada's flagship development priority, and a tremendous challenge for the Government of India," says a press release from Grand Challenges Canada.

One project, for instance, aims to prevent the spread of visceral leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that can lead to blindness in infants, the Star notes.

The funding, announced during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Canada last week, will go to Mobile Cr'ches, a nonprofit that has been running childcare for young children of migrant construction workers in India for 45 years.

"Three million young children these migrant construction workers end up on construction sites, in unsafe and unhygienic surroundings, without physical, educational, and emotional care, nurturing, and exposed to health risks," Grand Challenges Canada says of the program, which will receive $650,000 from the Canadian and Indian governments, as well as from corporations and non-governmental organizations.

The other three projects are community-based Mother Care for improving child survival and brain development in low

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