CARry on

I went to a fascinating presentation the other day about the work that's being done to create medical technologies for the developing world. Deep down I sort of have a thing for engineers, especially those designing things for people in the developing world. I won't bore you with details on all the cool things that were presented, but this one was just written up in the New York Times and is getting lots of buzz.

It's an incubator--for kids that are born prematurely. In places without good medical facilities and technologies, early birth can be a death sentence. Most (Times article says 96%) of the expensive incubators sent over from the first world are broken within five years--partially because hospitals donate old equipment, partially because the local staff may not know how to care for the device, and partially because the electricity is faulty, climate humid, etc. In any case, the technology was not fixing the problem and infants were dying as a result.

So a group of smart doctors and engineers got together and came up with a new plan: why not make an incubator out of stuff that already exists in the developing world. So they went to a local junkyard and got a bunch of old car parts. Then, once the device was built, they took it to the mechanic, and, since it was built out of car parts that he recognized, he had no trouble fixing it when it stopped working. The result is a highly portable, much less expensive ($1,000 compared to $40,000) machine that can actually be used and fixed. . . i.e., it can save lives.

The group is looking for money to manufacture the device now. Hopefully it can get on the market quickly. Next mission: reduce maternal mortality by making emergency obstetrics more available.

The whole article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/health/16incubators.html?pagewanted=1&ref=science
If you secretly love technology too, more can be found here: http://littledevicesthatcould.blogspot.com/ and http://www.cimit.org/programs-globalhealth.html