Model
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The Delivery gap

Why aren't newborns receiving this?
The Nigerian government aimed to reach 85% of newborns with iKMC by last year. Today only 5% of them do. Three solvable barriers explain why. ¹
01 · RESOURCEs
Human and physical resources are missing.
Most hospitals lack simple wraps and trained staff.
02 · DATA
iKMC isn't reliably measured.
Without routine indicators and evaluation, programs and funding have dried up.
03 · SCALING GAPS
There's a gap between policy and implementation.
Hospitals lack guidance and feedback systems to deliver quality care consistently.
How we close it

We close the delivery gap, hospital by hospital.
Our model transforms iKMC from an ignored recommendation into a reliable clinical service.
We empower families to care for their newborns with skin to skin and train them on exclusive breastfeeding and danger sign recognition.

We provide equipment.
We build physical capacity by providing each hospital with what its missing to deliver iKMC
How we do it
  • WHO aligned wards with KMC chairs.
  • Local procurement of wraps, scales, and thermometers, replicable across sites.
We train and deploy nurses.
Each hospital receives a team of trained nurses and a dedicate, onsite program team to deliver end to end supervision and monitoring of iKMC.

Our nurses spread this practice by training hospital nurses in existing areas and at antenatal and vaccination appointments.
How we do it
  • Full-time KMC nurses aim to register newborns within 24 hours.
  • An onsite M&E coordinator ensures the accurracy of data recorded in the program.
  • Continuous coaching closes the loop between data and bedside practice, led by the onsite program manager.
We run real time monitoring to improve our program.
Using a digital application we track and verify every KMC session. We use the same app to measure newborn health every 4 hours.

All data streams to live dashboards which enable data-driven decision making.

This helps us maximise how much our work improves newborn health.
How we do it
  • Every iKMC session is logged by our nurses including hours of skin-to-skin, feeding and danger-sign checks.
  • M&E officer verification. Our M&E officer verifies the accurracy of data through a random sampling selection method and asking mothers in line with WHO guidance.
  • Rapid iteration of the program through weekly quality improvement cycles closes the gap between protocol practice.
Kano's Honourable Commissioner of Health, Dr. Labaran Yusuf
We embed our work for lasting impact.
Local leaders guide our cultural tailoring of our model to the context. We share program data and evaluations to advocate for government adoption.
How we do it
  • We build government partnerships from the start to secure commitment towards active implementation.
  • We co-designed our programs with hospital leadership and key local champions.
  • We succeed when hospitals no longer need us and trained nurses become in house KMC champions.
the model
Our model is built and proven within the system
Government embedded
We work through partnerships with every hospital we work with. Our staff support government wards. We co
Real time data
Our digital M&E tracks every newborn comprehensively from birth to home.
Where others estimate, we observe.
Designed for handover
Protocols transfer to hospital management. Trained nurses become in-house champions.
Cost-effective
$3,136 per life saved in Year 1. Comparable with the most effective charities.
OUR PATH TO SCALE
Designed to scale with government
Nigeria's Every Newborn Action Plan targets 90% iKMC coverage by 2030. We are the only partner implementing it in large public hospitals in Kano. Our conversations with state ministers will focus on increasing domestic ownership over time.
Theory of Change
Give a newborn the first embrace they need