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This page translates GOAL 3's own evidence and Rethink Priorities' independent modelling into one concrete answer: what health impact does a single standard paediatric ward implementation deliver, per year and over five years. It's built for funders and partners who want a bottom-line planning figure rather than the underlying study-by-study evidence.
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For a high-level overview, GOAL 3 uses a standard ward implementation consisting of 10 IMPALA monitors; one local server and platform; installation, onboarding and training; and ongoing software and technical support.
For planning purposes, such an implementation is assumed to cover a ward with approximately 3,000 paediatric patient admissions per year [1]. Actual patient volumes vary substantially by hospital and ward type. This assumption is based primarily on paediatric ward data from Malawi and will be updated as additional implementation and study data become available. In short, for the calculations below, one standard implementation refers to one paediatric ward equipped with approximately 10 IMPALA monitors.
The figures below focus on paediatric wards, where GOAL 3 and RP both have enough evidence to model per-implementation impact. Neonatal units are not included in this table: while directional mortality evidence exists (27–35% observed relative reduction across three hospitals), there isn't yet a reliable standard-unit admissions or baseline-mortality assumption to convert that into per-implementation figures, and RP's discounted neonatal effect size (7% relative reduction) hasn't yet been translated into a comparable deaths/DALYs table. This will be added once that data emerges from currently ongoing studies.
The figures below translate this into estimated health impact per implementation, shown two ways. Current evidence applies the effect sizes observed directly in GOAL 3's evaluated hospitals, undiscounted. Rethink Priorities (RP), an independent evaluator GOAL 3 commissioned, applies a 60% internal-validity discount and a 30% external-validity discount to the same effect sizes, following the approach GiveWell uses for evidence of this type — producing a more conservative planning estimate for a hospital that has not yet been studied. GOAL 3 reports both and treats the range between them as the honest planning range. The observed figures show what happened in the two evaluated hospitals. Rethink Priorities' figure is its best estimate for a hospital that has not been studied, after discounting for study design and differences between settings. It is a central estimate, not a lower bound.
| Impact measure | Observed in two Malawian hospitals (undiscounted) | Rethink Priorities (discounted) |
|---|---|---|
| Mortality reduction | 1.6–1.9 percentage points (40–51%) | 12% relative |
| Paediatric admissions covered a year [1] | ~3,000 | ~3,000 |
| Deaths averted a year | ~48–57 | ~14 |
| Deaths averted over five years [2] | ~240–285 | ~70 |
| DALYs averted a year [4] | ~2,970–3,150 | Not reported per ward |
| Cost per DALY averted [5] | Cost-saving: more effective and less costly than standard care on both paediatric wards | US$7–17 |
| Five-year cost of the ward | US$34,850 | US$34,850 |
| Health workers trained [6] | ~42 per new hospital | ~42 per new hospital |
The RP column assumes 3.8% baseline mortality, as in Rethink Priorities' model. Deaths averted are modelled, not counted. For what the ward costs, see The costs of IMPALA