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Issue Lack of access to clean or safe water in the developing world contributes to the alarming burden of diarrheal diseases, particularly affecting children under five years old, immunocompromised individuals and the elderly. In Bolivia, access to safe water and sanitation is improving significantly but, despite important gains, there is still a high percentage of people without access to an improved water source (24%) and without access to an improved sanitation…water was performed to indicate the presence or absence of coliforms. A water filter with a 22-liter capacity conforming to World Health Organization (WHO) standards was selected for the project, and a distribution network was established with a supplier and local promoters. The aim of the project was to have 1,000 people (200 families – an average family has five members) using the water filter. Outcome So far, 614…has been reduced by 35.1% in the communities with filters and health quality has improved in 94% of community residents. The project team would like to scale up the program to partner with other municipalities to support the distribution of water filters in their areas. The SODIS Foundation is also preparing a new project in…

Issue Access to decentralized diagnostics can save millions of lives globally, yet the lack of supervision and training opportunities for overburdened nurses and community health workers in remote settings can negatively affect quality of testing and care. Solution ChipCare is a Toronto-based social enterprise developing a simple-to-use, extremely mobile, laboratory-quality, blood-testing platform for community-level health …and capture important data for program and health systems managers. Outcome ChipCare successfully developed key components of the two-way, cloud-based network connectivity system, including: 1.       Communication hardware design and implementation 2.       Supporting firmware and application software development: The team developed firmware to support the hardware design and front-end application software, to support remote locking/unlocking and…

Issue Worldwide, 800 women die every day due to pregnancy and childbirth complications, and more than 2,000 children are left motherless. While Peru as a whole has made good progress in improving pregnancy outcomes, rural areas of the Amazon basin – many of which are only accessible by boat – continue to lag and have…(64/1,000 and 191.7/100,000 respectively), compared with the national average (25/1,000 and 93/100,000 respectively). Solution The Mama River Program trained 84 community agents (midwives, community mobilizers and health promoters) from remote rural areas in the Peruvian Amazon basin to use smartphones to collect and send information of pregnant women and newborns from their community to a…identified and when a birth occurred. The project provided the community agents with the Mama River Kit, which included a smartphone (with the Open Data Kit application for reporting health data) and a solar panel, a clean delivery kit that included two pairs of surgical gloves, gauze, a small scalpel, umbilical cord clamp, alcohol, hand…of the Mama River program, the percentage of pregnant women who had their ANC during the first trimester tripled from 33.3% to 96.1%. Results also showed a significant increase in the percentage of pregnant women who had six or more ANC (from 70.6% to 96.1%) and there was a noted increase in the percentage of…

Issue Widespread lack of access to clean water in the Dominican Republic (DR) exposes individuals to waterborne diseases, such as cholera and diarrhea. Diseases caused by parasites, bacteria, protozoa and viruses could be prevented or significantly reduced if household-level, point-of-use water-treatment practices were properly implemented and used on a consistent basis. Solution Clay pot filters have been shown to outperform their counterparts by…·         To optimize clay pot filter manufacturing, by establishing protocols on how to manufacture and distribute the filters ·         To understand perceptions around water quality and quantity for domestic use and self-reported household health ·         To understand perceptions and knowledge of the filter and its maintenance requirements, in order to identify potential barriers to filter…households that used the filter. The project team intends to apply for Phase II Transition To Scale funding and has developed a detailed path forward to scale up their intervention, given that the clay pot filter has been optimized and verified to WHO standards and protocols at McMaster University. They have identified the need to…

Issue Depression is a major public health problem; access to mental health specialists in developing countries is inadequate and therefore depression is often untreated in primary healthcare settings. While there is an acute shortage of formal mental health workers in some countries, there is a surplus of the informal faith and traditional healers who are highly patronized…healers see about 40–60% of patients with mental health disorders and about 20% suffering from depression. There is a need to train these healers to integrate screening for depression and provide adapted psychosocial interventions into their routine practice. Solution The Dialogue project sought to empower, supervise, support and include the informal traditional and faith healers to deliver evidence-based psychosocial interventions, to reduce the mental health treatment gap in rural Kenya (Makueni County, Kibwezi…to increase access to mental health services in the community. The change in depression scores was measured using the Becks Depression Inventory scale (BDI) and showed a highly significant 34% improvement of depression symptoms three months after the intervention. In a test group of 100 subjects, a strong relationship was shown between the traditional and faith healers’…

Issue In Kenya, only 3.2% of women are screened for cervical cancer, which causes 1,700 deaths per year. Conventional Cervical Cancer Screening (CCS) approaches are not always socially acceptable or readily accessible in low-resource settings, since they require intervention by medical personnel. Solution The project tested a cervical self-screening device, iPap, that is being developed…social/financial requirements for low-income settings. The project, called Chaguo Letu, used participatory action research methodology with the Scenario-Based Planning (SBP) method, along with analytic tools and techniques, to decide how to implement a Cervical Self-Sampling Program (CSSP) in both urban and rural settings in Kenya. The key study design components for this research study included the application of the Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology, SBP method and the Data to Decision Model to conduct an impact analysis and support informed decision-making when making choices on the implementation options for CCS. Outcome The research efforts resulted in the development and application of a comprehensive decision-making framework that…

Issue The lack of access to good, quality diagnostics contributes to the enormous health burden in rural India and the developing world, where infectious diseases are major causes of death. Each year, more than 2 million people die of malaria, 4 million of acute respiratory infections, and 5.8 million from HIV and tuberculosis (TB). Present diagnostic approaches require either that patients travel long distances for testing or for samples to be transported to labs. Solution The team set out to develop a cost-effective, remote diagnostic device that could perform automated microscopy and…a single platform that could be integrated with an existing electronic medical record and remote health consultation service delivery channel. Outcome The project was able to successfully design and develop three different device prototypes from the ground up:  one to scan microscopic slides for interpretations, another one to read and interpret rapid point-of-care tests and a colorimeter for reagent-based testing. The image processing algorithm for…