7 Genius Hacks Saving Lives in the World’s Poorest Places
By Yael Grauer, Take Part, 16 September 2014.
By Yael Grauer, Take Part, 16 September 2014.
From Johannesburg to Pittsburgh, great ideas for helping those in need keep coming.
1. Critical Warmth for Premature Infants
New-borns have a hard time regulating their body temperature, and those born prematurely lack body fat, putting them at increased risk of hypothermia. Traditional incubators aren’t always an option in the developing world because they are costly (around US$20,000) and require constant electricity; cheaper options are ineffective or even dangerous. The Embrace infant warmer is low-tech and portable, keeping premature babies and those with low birth weights warm for up to six hours at a time. (It’s reusable.)
Embrace operates 82 programs in more than 11 countries, and it has helped more than 87,000 infants in partnership with local governments and NGOs. The class at Stanford University that came up with the idea projected that each Embrace would cost US$25, but after manufacture, it came out closer to US$200. That’s still a huge gain in affordability yet an indicator that new ideas in this space don’t always fulfil their early promise.
2. A Better Way to Collect Water
According to Matt Damon’s group Water.org, “In just one day, 200 million work hours are consumed by women collecting water for their families.” This cuts into time that could be spent on education, child care, or income-generating activities. It’s also physically taxing. Enter the Hippo Water Roller, a durable contraption designed by South Africans that cuts down on the time and effort necessary to transport water by allowing it to be rolled rather than carried.
Hippo Water Rollers typically last five to seven years, and executive director Grant Gibbs estimates that more than 300,000 people have transported around 1.85 billion gallons of water with the device over the past two decades, spanning a distance of 311 million miles. The cost is US$125 to users and US$167 to donors.
3. An App to Slow the Spread of Disease
Government officials in Lahore, Pakistan, have made dramatic improvements in slowing the spread of dengue fever in the past three years, owing in no small part to a mobile app called Clean Lahore. Computer scientist Umar Saif, who previously worked on an early epidemic detection system, developed the app.
The app allows sanitation workers responsible for clearing out standing water where disease-spreading mosquitoes breed to take before-and-after photos of their containment efforts and to track the presence of larvae that contribute to dengue. They then send this time-stamped, geo-located info to the country’s health department. The data are run through a statistical model to predict outbreaks based on the presence of larvae and the reports of patients coming through, as well as temperature, rainfall, and humidity. Residents in areas with a high likelihood of an outbreak are alerted via text message. Extra care is taken to clear standing water or chemically treat it in at-risk areas. Deaths from dengue fever in Lahore were down from 352 in 2011 to zero in 2012, with eight in 2013 and none so far this year.
(Correction [Sept. 16, 2014]: Originally, this article stated that 2010 was the year of 352 deaths from dengue fever in Lahore and that there were zero deaths in both 2011 and 2012.)
4. Better Communication With Patients
Behold the real-life universal translator. Phrazer helps doctors and patients who speak different languages communicate. The interactive handheld device provides instant translation, monitors vital signs, and stores data in an electronic medical record. Patients can answer questions about their symptoms and medical history through the touch screen interface, and the device adjusts itself in response to users. Because of frequent upgrades, the device is typically replaced every year and a half, although it has a 10-year life span.
Minnesota-based manufacturer GeaCom has worked alongside direct relief organizations in Honduras and Cameroon and donates used devices to medical care facilities in need in Honduras, Afghanistan, Cameroon, and India.
5. Clean Water Meets Sanitation Education
WATERisLIFE has a solution for the millions of people dying of waterborne illnesses such as cholera, typhoid, and E. coli: a book that’s also a water filter. Each page of the Drinkable Book not only provides information on sanitation and hygiene but is coated with silver nanoparticles. Readers simply put the page in a custom filter box and run water through the box. “After passing water through our filter, we found a reduction of greater than 99.9 percent in bacteria count, which is comparable to the tap water in this country,” Theresa Dankovich, the chemist who created the paper, said in a video.
The paper is projected to cost only a few cents per page, each of which can purify water for up to 30 days. Once funded and produced, WATERisLIFE plans to distribute the books to India, Haiti, Kenya, and Ghana and make them available for global partner distribution.
6. A Simple (Vinegar) Solution
Sometimes the simplest answer is the best. Cervical cancer is the second-leading type of cancer in women, and according to the World Health Organization, “due to poor access to screening and treatment services, more than 90 percent of deaths occur to women living in low- and middle-income countries.” It’s easily treatable if caught early, but many countries lack the laboratories and equipment to process screening tests common in wealthier places. Nurses and midwives in countries such as Botswana and Thailand can employ a simpler screening technique using vinegar swabs to spot precancerous lesions. Abnormalities can be treated that same day.
According to Jhpiego, an international non-profit health organization affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, “Women in low-resource settings face a number of barriers to accessing care, including lack of transportation, and providing them with an opportunity to get screened and receive results and treatment immediately thereafter…greatly reduces the burden on them.”
7. Mobile Support for Clinical Decisions
In remote locations where there are no doctors, up-to-date medical information can save lives. Health eVillages, a program of the Robert F. Kennedy Centre for Justice & Human Rights and Physicians Interactive, provides caregivers in rural settings iPods, iPads, and other handheld devices equipped with reference libraries and support tools for clinical decisions.
Health eVillages has provided this critical medical information in underserved areas in Haiti, China, Uganda, Kenya - and even rural Louisiana after the 2010 Gulf oil spill.
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