Monday, January 11, 2010 – Friday, January 15, 2010
When a baby dies within 28 days of its birth, it is termed a neonatal death. One of the big problems babies face is hypothermia: they are not able to regulate their own body temperature, and therefore they cannot stay warm. In fact, room temperature for these small infants feels freezing cold. Difficult access to low cost technologies has caused many neonatal deaths that could have been easily avoided with the help of simple innovations. Last week, the Twitter Social Enterprise of the Day focused on affordable neonatal healthcare. Both huge multinational conglomerates like GE as well as individual innovators like Dr. Sathya Jeganathan are working towards saving innocent lives through simple solutions such as low cost incubators and baby warming blankets.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Social Enterprise of the Day – Embrace Global
With a design that looks like a miniature sleeping bag but in reality saves the lives of vulnerable infants, the Embrace is a new, low-cost solution to help keep low birth weight babies’ body temperature warm so they can survive and thrive in developing countries. Developed by Embrace Global, a non profit seeking to help vulnerable babies survive and thrive, a group of enthusiastic innovators decided to build a low-cost incubator based on the Kangaroo Mother Care model, that is, uniting mother and child by encouraging skin-to-skin contact to reduce post-partum trauma to both. Their ‘Warmer’ costs less than $100 and is tailor-made to function in conjunction with local sensibilities: it works with or without electricity. In the non-electric version, a layer of wax emits latent heat when warmed with a glass of hot water.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Social Enterprise of the Day – Path
A catalyst for global health, PATH’s initiatives have ensured that innovations in healthcare respond to healthcare needs in over 70 countries. PATH’s work in maternal and child care include innovation such as a low cost neonatal resuscitator, a nevirapine pouch that helps HIV-positive mothers bring protective medication to their newborn children, and the Uniject device that is a prefilled, autodisabling injection device that helps health workers quickly and easily give an accurate dose of oxytocin without risk of infection transmission from needle reuse. Path meets the complex health needs of an expanding world with this multipronged approach that moves solutions from innovation to impact: supporting new ideas through inception, development, and testing; paving the way for introduction in low-resource countries; and working with governments and communities to integrate and expand the most successful ideas.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Social Enterprise of the Day – AKHA
In an effort to extend healthcare to the remote sandbar islands of Chapori by the banks of the Brahmaputra River in Assam, India, boats called “Akhas” are used to reach underpriviledged indigenous tribes. The Akha, which comes equipped with medical staff and communications materials, makes visits to these isolated regions with the mission to regularly provide facilities for maternal and child health as well as promote awareness about health-seeking behaviors. Findings suggest that the service delivery undertaken by the boat, which has been continually expanding over the last few years, has dramatically improved thousands of lives. 71 percent of the Chapori mothers sought some form of antenatal care during their last pregnancy. Of these, 42 percent sought care from the Akha.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Social Enterprise of the Day – GE Healthcare
GE Healthcare, the US$17 billion healthcare business of General Electric Company as part of its ‘healthymagination’ initiative to reduce cost and increase quality and access to affordable healthcare worldwide, has developed the Lullaby Warmer. The device is a bed with an overhead heater, showering the newborn with delicate warmth while the baby is cleaned after birth and checked for its first vital statistics. Remarkably simple to operate, even for a first-time operator, GE’s Lullaby Warmer targets improving access to care in urban and semi-urban settings.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Social Enterprise of the Day – Low cost infant warmer
Neo-natal mortality is a devastating problem in the developing world and Dr. Sathya Jeganathan, a pediatrician in Chengalpattu Government Medical College in Tamil Nadu, India, has devoted her life to combating scourge. In her rural hospital, where 39 out of every 1,000 children born do not survive, she has been determined to cut the mortality rate. Bringing together neonatal nurses and local electricians, Dr. Jeganathan created a low-cost baby warmer made of readily available 100-watt light bulbs and locally harvested wood. Costing only US$100 to build (a fraction of the cost of commercial alternatives) and easy to maintain, the warmers soon cut the hospital’s infant mortality by nearly half. Technical and business development help from L-RAMP India , a Chennai-based, joint initiative of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and Rural Innovations Network (RIN), is allowing Dr. Jeganathan to further develop the product design and create a business model. This key support means she’ll soon be able to distribute the infant warmer to other rural hospitals in the region.
