As a partner in the SUPREME Secure consortium, WACI Health will contribute to efforts to ensure diagnostics and treatments for pre-eclampsia and anaemia reach women who need them most.
WACI Health is proud to be part of SUPREME Secure, a consortium within the new Sustained Uptake of Products for Pre-Eclampsia and Maternal Anemia (SUPREME) initiative, backed by a US$52.5 million investment from Unitaid with additional funding from the Gates Foundation.
Announced on 19 March 2026, SUPREME brings together two of Africa’s most experienced global health implementers — the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) and Amref Health Africa — alongside a coalition of partners to introduce and scale up existing interventions and emerging innovations for the timely detection and treatment of pre-eclampsia and anaemia in pregnant women.
Pre-eclampsia, a hypertensive disorder that can cause dangerous spikes in blood pressure and seizures, causes the death of tens of thousands of women and half a million newborns each year. Anaemia affects nearly 40 percent of all pregnant women globally and increases the risk of serious complications including haemorrhage, preterm birth, and low birth weight.
Lifesaving tools to address these conditions already exist from magnesium sulfate, which costs less than a dollar and can more than halve the risk of life-threatening seizures, to low-dose aspirin, blood-pressure screening devices, and intravenous iron. Yet supply chain gaps, substandard quality, late diagnosis, and undertrained health workers continue to prevent many women in low- and middle-income countries from accessing them.
Our role
SUPREME Secure, one of the initiative’s two implementation streams, is led by CHAI and includes WACI Health, the Concept Foundation, the Aurum Institute, and the Burnet Institute. The consortium focuses on the product side of the equation: ensuring that the medicines, diagnostics, and tools women need are rigorously tested, reliably supplied, and priced within reach of the health systems serving them.
WACI Health’s contribution sits at the intersection of advocacy and accountability. We are working to ensure that community voices and civil society perspectives are embedded in how these products are introduced and scaled, and that policy commitments translate into practice at the country level.
The SUPREME initiative will focus on Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Senegal, and Tanzania, working with ministries of health to strengthen antenatal care services and ensure essential maternal health tools reach facilities where they are needed most. Select activities will also take place in Nigeria and South Africa.
A companion stream, SUPREME Lifelines, is led by Amref Health Africa with Jhpiego, Solthis, and Market Access Africa, and focuses on in-country product introduction and implementation research to guide scale-up as part of effective models of care.
SUPREME reflects the kind of multi-partner, systems-level investment that the maternal and newborn health community has long called for. This is an initiative that addresses not just whether effective tools exist, but whether they actually reach the women who need them. As an organisation rooted in achieving health equity across Africa, WACI Health is committed to ensuring that civil society and community accountability remain central to how this initiative is designed, delivered, and measured.
Connect with us in Nairobi
The SUPREME announcement comes as the global maternal and newborn health community gathers in Nairobi for the International Maternal Newborn Health Conference (IMNHC 2026), held 23–26 March under the theme “Moving Forward. Together.” The conference is a critical moment for the sector to review the evidence, strengthen accountability, and catalyse new partnerships and investments to ensure mothers and newborns not only survive but thrive.
SUPREME consortium partners including CHAI and Unitaid are presenting across multiple sessions on maternal health product access and innovation. Follow us on LinkedIn/X/Facebook for updates from the conference.
