August 20, 2025—The Trinity Challenge has awarded Jhpiego with a grand prize in its competition aimed at improving community access to effective antibiotics thereby mitigating the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance. In partnership with eHealth Africa, Jhpiego Nigeria submitted an innovative digital solution called Com-WATCH which integrates data-driven technology to manage inventory control and spot substandard and falsified antibiotics at the community level across Nigeria.

Jhpiego was initially shortlisted from 171 applications across 51 countries for The Trinity Challenge on Community Access to Effective Antibiotics and was chosen to share the £1 million prize fund alongside the University of Notre Dame’s PADS initiative. With £500,000, Jhpiego and partner eHealth Africa aim to replace fragmented, paper-based inventory systems with affordable, technology-driven solutions that integrate stock control and surveillance mechanisms to detect substandard and falsified antibiotics and ensure the availability of antibiotics.

Over the next two years, Com-WATCH will deploy a community-powered, AI-enabled surveillance and inventory management tool. Through a simple app, SMS, and chatbot, users can verify the authenticity of antibiotics for human and animals using image recognition matched against Nigeria’s regulatory database. At the same time, vendors can track inventory, monitor expiry dates, and receive alerts before stock runs out, which can also operate offline. Every scan feeds into a national, real-time dashboard powered by machine learning, which predicts counterfeit hotspots and supply gaps, generate sufficient data, enabling early targeted public health response by regulators and stakeholders.

Specifically, Com-WATCH will:

Deploy digital tools in six high-burden Nigerian states, protecting millions of people from substandard and falsified antibiotics.
Equip and train thousands of medicine vendors with digital tools to track inventory, flag expired drugs, and ensure consistent availability of quality antibiotics.
Strengthen data infrastructure, feeding real-time intelligence to public health authorities for faster, targeted interventions.
Generate Nigeria’s first community-level dataset on antibiotic safety, offering vital insights to inform AMR policy and response strategies.

“For Nigerians, this means a future where a mother buying medicine for her sick child can be confident it is genuine and effective,” said Dr. Oluwa’Yemisi Ogundare, Project Director for Global Health Security Initiatives and Com-Watch team lead at Jhpiego. “By empowering communities to detect fake drugs and providing vendors with tools to prevent stockouts of antibiotics, we reduce treatment failures, protect families from harm, and increase trust in the health system.”

“This recognition validates our commitment to tackling two of the most pressing challenges in global health, ensuring effective stock control and combating the circulation of substandard and falsified antibiotics,” said Dr. David Akpan, Deputy Director of eHealth Africa. “We are better positioned to strengthen supply chains, safeguard communities, and advance the global fight against antimicrobial resistance.”

Globally, AMR is an antibiotic emergency predicted to cause millions of deaths, primarily in low- and middle-income countries. A lack of adequate antibiotic supplies and the use of poor-quality or counterfeit antibiotics can result in incorrect dosing. This means that medications may not effectively treat infections, which allows drug-resistant pathogens to grow and spread, compromising patient outcomes and accelerating the spread of antimicrobial resistance.

In response to a lack of comprehensive data on the prevalence of substandard and falsified antibiotics, particularly at the community level, Com-WATCH will create Nigeria’s first community-level antibiotic safety dataset and a scalable model. By tackling antimicrobial resistance at its source in the community, Com-WATCH will contribute a vital, real-world solution to a pressing global health security threat. It will serve as a replicable model for other low- and middle-income countries demonstrating how low-cost, AI-enabled, community-driven systems can strengthen health security from the ground up, protecting lives, curbing antimicrobial resistance, and advancing access to safe, effective antibiotics.

“This is an antibiotic emergency, and both innovation and collaboration are critical,” said Professor Dame Sally Davies, Founder of the Trinity Challenge at the prizewinner announcement. “In the face of antimicrobial resistance, a threat that knows no borders, [the Trinity Challenge prizewinning solutions] will not only benefit individual communities, they’ll benefit all of us now and our grandchildren.”

Read The Trinity Challenge’s announcement here.

About Jhpiego

Jhpiego is a global health nonprofit with more than 50 years of experience innovating to save the lives of women, men, and families around the world. Originally established in 1973 as the Johns Hopkins Program for International Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics, Jhpiego has since evolved into a multidimensional organization with active programming in over 30 countries. In partnership with national governments, health experts, and local communities, Jhpiego creates and delivers transformative health care solutions that build providers’ skills, strengthen health systems, and ensure equitable access to high-quality, lifesaving care for all—regardless of location.

About eHealth Africa

eHealth Africa empowers vulnerable and underserved communities to achieve healthier, more prosperous lives by strengthening health systems through innovative, data-driven digital solutions and person-centered care. They were founded in 2009 on the simple idea that communities in developing countries could have better health care when providers are able to make data-driven decisions. With over 500 staff, they have offices in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Germany and the United States and work across West Africa in many countries, including Chad, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, and others.

About The Trinity Challenge

The Trinity Challenge (TTC) is a charity supporting the creation of data-driven solutions to help protect against global health threats. They believe data and analytics hold the key to building effective, affordable, and scalable solutions to current and future pandemics and health emergencies, and are committed to working with governments, individuals and organizations across the world, to help improve our resilience against current and future threats to global health.

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