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Issue Mental illness is the largest contributor to disability worldwide. Three-quarters of the 450 million mentally ill people worldwide live in the developing world, where a devastating link between mental illness and poverty has long been ignored and few receive adequate treatment. Solution The project aimed to evaluate the services provided by Basic Needs Ghana…of the mental health and development model (in relation to the mental health outcomes, quality of support and livelihood empowerment) and to examine the implications and process for scaling up the model beyond the current focus on four regions, through a social franchising approach. A quantitative survey questionnaire and focus group discussions were used to gather data.…and associated community NGOs, and a stronger Basic Needs Ghana advocacy role regarding health system bottlenecks in community mental healthcare delivery.   The project team intends to apply for Transition To Scale (TTF) funding to expand the geographical reach of the model, to promote maternal mental health in 74 districts of four regions in Ghana.

Issue Worldwide, almost 10% of newborn babies (13.6 million annually) require some help to begin to breathe during the first 30 seconds of life. If trained health personnel are available, they provide tactile stimulation through warming, positioning and drying. When additional support for neonatal resuscitation is needed, the World Health Organization recommends use of a self-inflatable bag attached to a facial mask. However, the bag and mask have many constraints: …small enough to minimize the possibilities of lung injury. The team trained 58 healthcare personnel (51 nurses and 7 physicians) in neonatal resuscitation and all participants were invited to test the device using the Flow-Gas-Analyzer. These results, including laboratory tests, will be presented as a research report at a later stage. No clinical study was…

Issue Access to quality diagnostics is a critical health challenge in Uganda and other developing countries. In many low-income settings, misdiagnosis of diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis (due to a lack of capacity to examine samples microscopically) has caused high fatality rates, drug resistance, economic burden and eroded trust of local medical practitioners. Recent innovations in mobile phone camera-based microscopy have opened up an entirely new way to diagnose infectious diseases remotely. Solution The hypothesis tested by the project was that recent advances in hardware fabrication and artificial intelligence software could be used to attach a mobile phone to a camera and to create effective diagnostic tools for common tropical conditions, such as malaria. The project aimed to exploit the relatively widespread availability of microscopes (present in 50% of rural Ugandan health facilities, even though…

Issue The majority of hospitals in limited-resource settings lack facilities to safely dispose of harmful medical waste. Cost-prohibitive incinerators lead hospitals to rely on inappropriate alternatives. Contaminated supplies and needles are dumped onsite and on roadsides – accessible to animals and the community, spreading infectious agents that can lead to sepsis, hepatitis and HIV transmission. Solution The Incinerator Initiative project sought to develop a medical waste management training program for hospital staff at two sub-districts hospitals (UHC) in Bangladesh and to develop a functional medical waste incinerator concept focusing on clean combustion of all hazardous medical waste,…

Issue The development of point-of-care devices is a rapidly growing topic of research; but not well developed in low-income countries. One of the requirements for onsite production of such tests is the identification of simplified alternatives to well-engineered techniques: liquid transport, liquid measurement and dilutions, micro-patterning, weighing and densitometry, centrifugation, etc. This would enable tests to be produced onsite to diagnose diseases such as malaria,…

…24% and 80%, respectively. Oxygen therapy is commonly provided in intensive care units (ICUs) by continuous monitoring, using desktop pulse oximetry and manual adjustment of the oxygen supply by healthcare providers. But ICUs are expensive in terms of equipment and healthcare delivery, and often not available in resource-limited settings. Solution The goal of the project was to develop an affordable, portable, automated system (pulse oximeter) for continuously monitoring and adjusting supplemental oxygen levels for hypoxic patients. Sub-components needed to develop the prototype included: ·         An Oxygen Reader Subsystem with fingertip SpO2 (serum pressure and oxygen) sensor capable of reading the photoplethysmographm (PPG) signal non-invasively in a continuous manner, with sampling rate equal to 500 samples per second; every second, the acquired PPG measurements would be sent wirelessly to the Automatic…

Working in Ghana, this project will introduce ways of alleviating pain for infants born prematurely and treated in special neonatal intensive care units (NICU)s -- the tiniest of kids who experience moderate to severe pain several times daily due to diagnostic and therapeutic procedures such as blood sample collections and medicine injections.Project leader Dr. Bonnie Stevens of Toronto’s Hospital for…Canadian government grant. Plans calls for the toolkit’s integration into the curriculum at the School of Nursing (where there is limited pain content) and its use scaled up to reach additional countries.Says Dr. Stevens: “Decreasing the intensity of painful procedures in hospitalized infants using simple, inexpensive, evidence-based strategies has the potential to minimize both immediate…

…was wasted, and two in every 10 were underweight. Poor nutrition and malnutrition are associated with poor feeding practices, resulting from issues such as lack of access to appropriate foods and sub-optimal knowledge and attitudes among caregivers. Solution The project sought to engage women in the community of Torbeck (Southern Haiti) by providing education on…among mothers. The ultimate objective was to improve the nutrition of children between the ages of 24 months and six years. The team developed a business/sales and promotion plan for the fortified cereal flour (Mama+) involving the selection and training of local women. Radio and television ads were developed and broadcast to promote the flour and its…A correlation was seen between the Mama+ consumption and enhanced nutritional status, with the malnutrition rate reduced by 1.2% (from 5.6% to 4.4%) in Torbeck among children up to five years old. While small, the income earned by selling Mama+ flour, when added to the fixed salary earned for their nutrition work, allowed participating mothers…

IssueThere are nine million new cases of dementia every year worldwide and one new case of dementia in every three seconds in the world. According to the Alzheimer’s Disease International World Alzheimer's Report 2015, the global economic impact of dementia is $604 billion US. In Indonesia, twenty million adults or about 10% of the population is older than 60 and at risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD), a relatively unknown disease in the country. The most recent data on AD’s prevalence in Indonesia was conducted by Survey Meter, Atmajaya University and…and a lack of geriatricians and high-quality dementia care for the elderly aggravates the situation. Solution A project called called Kick-starting Alzheimer’s Awareness in Indonesia  aimed to promote Alzheimer awareness through an integrated campaign: bombarding the public with key messages through social and conventional media, learning activities with experts and experienced caregivers, and media engagement.…to do its part in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease and successfully approached Prodia Lab, one of Indonesia’s largest pharmacy chains, to help disseminate the ten warning signs and seven stages of Alzheimer’s videos, by playing them on televisions in the waiting rooms of 100 of its branches, spread across 78 cities and 29 provinces in…to be the first Age Friendly Bank in Indonesia by 2017. The project team plans to apply for Phase II funding from Grand Challenges Canada to scale up the project. Partnerships have been developed with a number of organizations, including the Jakarta Provincial Government, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Social Affairs, Maverick Indonesia, Juara…