Search results for:

Issue Tuberculosis (TB) affects nine million people annually and is highly infectious. Sputum smear fluorescence microscopy is the recommended method to detect TB but accessibility is limited. Solution The objective of the project was to develop a device that converts a cellphone into a sputum smear reader for TB diagnosis in medically under-serviced regions of Pakistan. The device combines a specialized lens, image-processing software and widely available camera phones. The device, comprising of eight LEDs and a magnifying lens, can send live-streaming videos of a magnified sputum smear slide to a cellphone, using its own Wi-Fi signal. The software is a graphical user interface (GUI) that displays the live-streaming video of the sputum smear slide to the operator. Outcome The team was successful in…

Issue The World Health Assembly has emphasized the need for strengthened emergency medicine services worldwide to reduce the burden of acute illness/injury in developing countries. Ethiopia faces a challenge in providing adequate emergency medicine services due to a critical health worker shortage, leaving it with only one doctor for every 45,000 people and no emergency medicine …sudden illness in the ED, the hospital is expanding the number of intensive-care unit beds, improving communication and transfer between hospitals and expanding operative capacity. A trauma registry, supported by Grand Challenges Canada, has captured the immense burden of injury seen in the ED for the first time. With this data and new knowledge, the Federal…

Issue To manage and mitigate the impact of global emergencies and disasters of increasing frequency and magnitude, there is a need to expand the number of trained health professionals. Equally important is the need for access to updated data, information and knowledge on health and emergencies. Solution A project to advance and standardize humanitarian training was implemented online through a partnership between McGill University, the…

Issue More than 200 million children worldwide are at risk for lost developmental potential, but very few children are screened or treated for neurodevelopmental delays. Research shows that early, stimulating, responsive parent-child interactions build young neuronal density and can buffer the effects of poverty, but distributing this knowledge to vulnerable families has been a challenge. Solution The Universal Baby team at Socios En Salud (Partners In Health, Peru) sought to test whether six videos – designed to engage the primary caregiver in affectionate interactions – could significantly improve the quality of mother-child interaction. The project involved mothers of children between the ages of 10…Universal Baby clips of eight to 12 minutes each. Community Health Workers (CHWs) were trained by project staff to incorporate the videos into 12 weekly ‘healthy child’ group sessions. Videos were delivered by CHWs to 18 mothers as a bi-weekly component to group visits, while an additional 20 mothers received the healthy child visits only.…

Issue The emergence of drug-resistant HIV (DR-HIV) is a global health crisis, with up to 72% of patients failing HIV treatment and 6.8% of newly infected individuals now having evidence of drug-resistant HIV (World Health Organization, 2012). Drug resistance is fueled by under-diagnosis of HIV treatment failures and resistance, which require viral load testing. Rwanda, a Sub-Saharan country with over 150,000 individuals living with HIV, has just one facility capable of viral load testing, which is slow, costly and inaccessible. There is an urgent need for approximately 200,000 HIV viral load tests per year for Rwanda’s 42 district hospitals. Solution Nanobiosym (NBS), in collaboration with its on-the-ground partners in Rwanda, introduced and piloted its…

Issue Street food contributes significantly to urban food supplies in 74% of World Health Organization (WHO) member states and is often a source of nutrition for people with low income. Bacterial contamination in street food causes enteric diseases; unpublished reports from Bangladesh document a poor sense of food safety among street food vendors and a high …safety education program to improve food safety knowledge, attitudes and practices among street food vendors. Use of low-cost techniques for treating water used for street food can promote a vendor’s business and livelihood. The study tested food items of 115 street vendors in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and found that 30% of the street food in Dhaka…was received through an agreement between the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) and FAO. The project team is planning on applying for Phase II Transition To Scale funding to scale up in a selected number of wards of Dhaka South City and evaluating the impact of scale-up in improving street food safety in a larger street food vendor…

Issue Uncorrected refractive errors (e.g., myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism) are significant causes of preventable visual impairment, blindness and disability. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 158 million people are visually impaired due to uncorrected refractive errors, including 8.7 million people who are blind. Lack of awareness and inability to access or afford services are the primary contributing factors. Solution Implemented in Vietnam, the goal of the project was to screen underserved schoolchildren for uncorrected refractive errors. This was done by enhancing and expanding Helen Keller International’s (HKI) innovative ChildSight® program through integration with private optic shops in Kon Tum Province,…implementation. Findings showed that, in general, ChildSight® achieved its goals. Based on the success and public health significance of its eye care programs, HKI Vietnam has received support from multiple levels of the government, including schools, district, provincial and national health and education departments. HKI has received additional funding from Grand Challenges Canada, as well…

…under the age of five, with the majority of cases occurring in developing countries. The United Nations declared that one of the four Millennium Development Goals is to reduce childhood mortality, and making inroads into the toll taken by diarrhea would help move towards this goal. Solution The project aimed to develop a handy device that is low-cost and portable, and yet sensitive enough for the detection of diarrhea-causing pathogens in water. Single-walled carbon nanotube thin film (SWNT-TF) sensors have been integrated onto two prototype platforms, test strip-based and microchip-based. Test strips…removing the top layer along with chemicals at the tip of each strip, and using the plastic substrate and metal contacts only. Both prototype platforms can be coupled to an electronic read-out unit to perform pathogen detection. For pathogen detection, with the strip-based prototype, the strip is inserted into a contact socket, which is connected…a bacteria (E. coli) strain; detection of about 50 virions and a single bacteria in two hours was confirmed. This indicates that better sample delivery methods to promote virus/bacteria transport to the sensor surface could lead to successful detection at even lower solution concentrations than that showed in the proof-of-concept study. The approach does not…

Issue Despite the existence of many intervention programs, high HIV infection rates among adolescents worldwide account for 42% of new infections, with 80% of new infections being in Sub-Saharan Africa (UNAIDS 2010). Girls aged 15–24 have HIV infection rates twice as high as in young men and, in Kenya, HIV prevalence among young women aged 15–24 is four times higher than among young men. Adolescent girls are also more likely to contract HIV from older, more sexually active male partners, whom they look to for financial support. Solution The aim of the No Sugar For Me project was to test the impact of training girls in negotiation skills when faced with situations that could…

…at risk of infection. In addition, the disease form in livestock causes ~$7.5 billion in annual losses in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Simple and definitive diagnostic tests for the three forms of trypanosomiasis are lacking. Solution The project aimed to develop a simple, field-based, diagnostic test that would be capable of detecting all pathogenic trypanosomes in vectors, animals and, if possible, humans responsible for causing three forms of…temperatures of 55oC The results are visually inspected by colour change or using a dipstick. Outcome Testing showed unequivocal detection of target DNA, with an analytical sensitivity superior to PCR tests available for detection of pathogens in vectors and animals. The throughput from sample preparation to result was approximately >62 tests per three hours/per person, with time…