At the Wellbeing Foundation Africa (WBFA), we are proud to advance a critical collaboration with Picterus Newborn Health under Project Oscar – Light for Life, an initiative designed to strengthen early detection and management of neonatal jaundice in Nigeria. While neonatal jaundice is often treatable when identified promptly, it remains one of the most overlooked yet preventable causes of newborn disability and mortality across many low- and middle-income countries. In Nigeria, the challenge extends beyond clinical care to systemic barriers such as delayed detection, limited access to diagnostic tools, late referrals, and low levels of community awareness.
Neonatal jaundice occurs when a newborn has an excessive buildup of bilirubin in the blood, causing yellowing of the skin and eyes. According to global health data, severe untreated jaundice can lead to kernicterus — a form of permanent brain damage — or even death. The World Health Organization highlights that many newborn deaths and long-term disabilities linked to jaundice are preventable with early screening and timely treatment. Yet in many settings, especially where laboratory infrastructure is limited, early detection remains inconsistent.
Through Project Oscar – Light for Life, WBFA and partners are addressing these gaps using an integrated health systems strengthening approach implemented in collaboration with the Lagos State Ministry of Health and frontline healthcare providers. Rather than treating neonatal jaundice as a standalone clinical issue, the project embeds prevention and detection into routine maternal and newborn care.
Our work under this initiative brings together standardized newborn screening within routine postnatal services, capacity building for healthcare workers across primary, secondary, and referral levels, digital innovation to improve early identification of at-risk newborns, community education to encourage timely care-seeking, and data generation to guide policy decisions, scale-up strategies, and future investments. This holistic approach ensures that solutions are sustainable, measurable, and embedded within existing health structures.
A key milestone in this collaboration is the introduction of Picterus’ digital screening technology into the healthcare ecosystem. The Picterus Jaundice Pro device uses smartphone-based technology to measure bilirubin levels non-invasively, enabling frontline health workers to detect jaundice quickly and accurately without relying solely on laboratory testing. By making screening more accessible and scalable, this innovation helps bridge the diagnostic gap that often delays treatment in resource-constrained settings.
What makes partnerships like this particularly impactful is their focus on implementation evidence. Beyond deploying new technology, the collaboration generates real-world data on how innovation can be integrated into government-led health systems. This evidence is critical for informing broader national adoption and for shaping scalable models that can be replicated in similar contexts globally.
At WBFA, our commitment to maternal and newborn health is rooted in the belief that preventable conditions should never determine a child’s future. By working closely with government institutions, global innovators, and community stakeholders, we are building systems that prioritize early detection, strengthen frontline capacity, and empower families with knowledge.
Project Oscar – Light for Life represents meaningful progress for Nigeria and offers valuable lessons for advancing newborn health across low- and middle-income countries. Through sustained collaboration and innovation, we move closer to a future where no newborn suffers lifelong consequences from a condition that can and should be prevented.