20 Canadian ideas to urge child health win Grand Challenges funding

An Uber-like tie that can assistance get profound women in Kenya to health care; a 3D printer plan to yield orthotic inclination for Nepali children with clubfoot and scoliosis; and a microchip that can figure out what micro-organism is causing diarrhea in children in Bangladesh.

These are among 20 Canadian projects that have won appropriation by Grand Challenges, that is awarding $2 million to Canadian innovators with ideas that residence issues of child and maternal health.

On Monday, a module announced 20 winning projects, seeking out artistic solutions to health-care problems in building and middle-income countries. Each will get about $100,000.

​All of a projects are during a thought theatre and a seed income is meant to exam either it is value serve building them, says Dr. Karlee Silver, vice-president of programs during Grand Challenges. Projects are selected for their “boldness,” a ability set of their teams and a feasibility of contrast a thought in a field, she said.

Grand Challenges Canada is partial of an general beginning to support confidant innovations to residence health and growth problems and is saved by a supervision of Canada and other partners. It has been using given 2011, and this is a eighth turn of funding. Silver estimates about 20 per cent of projects infer to be value holding to a incomparable scale.

“The income allows us to adjust a record to get it right,” says Dr. Richard Lester, owner and arch medical lead for WelTel, a Vancouver non-profit that is building a Uber-like ride-sharing use that will assistance profound women in remote areas of Kenya get to medical care.

Women in remote tools of Kenya could be connected to private drivers around content summary so they can get a float to health care. (WelTel/Uberlance)

WelTel has already had success with a content summary or SMS use to check in on Kenyan patients with HIV.

Texting works even in remote areas

“Even in a many remote areas of northern Kenya, people have entrance to dungeon use to send texts,” he told CBC News.

The plea now is to bond profound women in communities though health caring to a network of private drivers who can take them to a hospital if they start to feel ill or go into labour.

Dr. Lester pronounced ambulances are singular in these areas, though there are many drivers with private vehicles who would acquire a few additional dollars from carrying women to health care.

• 3D printer used to make synthetic legs for Ugandans

“Some of a investment will go to seeking out partners on a village turn and reckoning out a potential,” he said.

The WelTel group would like to sight some of a drivers in initial assist and has hopes of anticipating an NGO that could assistance defray a cost of a ride-sharing service, he said, both developments that can now be investigated since of a funding.

Nikolai Dechev, plan lead of a University of Victoria 3D copy project, hopes to emanate low-cost, effective, gentle braces with a 3D printer to provide children with clubfoot, a misaligned foot, or scoliosis, a span of a spine.

Low-cost prop for clubfoot, scoliosis

Many children with these conditions in Nepal go untreated, Dechev says. “It depends on their family’s resources and how distant they live from Kathmandu. If they have to float a train for 6 or 7 hours, it’s fundamentally not affordable.”

“Our dream is to boat one hurl of cosmetic and a printer and imitation something on demand,” he told CBC News. A 3D printer does a measuring and can emanate a customized prop that fits a flourishing child for about $40.

A 3D printer is used to emanate a scoliosis brace. (University of Victoria)

If it proves successful, it could also be a cheaper orthotics choice for children in grown countries, Dechev said.

The plan group is operative with doctors and an orthopedic surgeon in Nepal and it could be dual years or longer before it’s famous either a braces are viable solution. 

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Ricelsa Gem Otico, plan coordinator, interviewis a new mom during Barangay Health Centre in Caloocan City in a Philippines. (Ding Zafe)

The other projects that won appropriation in this round:

• University of Calgary: Developing a DNA-based exam for malaria in profound mothers that will be tested in Ethiopia.
• University of British Columbia, Vancouver: Developing a mobile phone app to urge diagnosis of sepsis in infants in Malawi.
• University of Alberta, Edmonton: Developing a device that some-more accurately diagnoses pneumonia in children to be test in a margin in Congo.
• University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon: Will exam a belligerent eggshell addition that can be combined to children’s food to Ethiopia to boost calcium levels and forestall fluorosis, caused by additional fluoride that occurs naturally in a water.
• University of Manitoba, Winnipeg: Developing a elementary apparatus to detect blocked work that can lead to maternal and child death.
• Amref Health Africa in Canada, Toronto: Testing a mobile app to diagnose malaria in Kenya, anticipating to urge correctness in diagnosis and revoke over-consumption of anti-malarial medication.

  

  Training for technologists and students on LAMP, a DNA-based exam for malaria, during Addis Ababa University Biotechnology Institute, on Jun 28, 2017. (Dylan Pillai)

• RQDN Labs,Toronto: Setting adult a text-message formed support complement for new mothers with postpartum basin in a Philippines.
• University of Toronto: Improving child nourishment in a Philippines with an present ramen supplemented with Spirulina, a nutrient-rich algae.
• University of Toronto: Developing an easy home exam for germ in food and educating mothers in how to forestall food decay in squatter camps in Egypt.
• NuPhysics Consulting Ltd, Toronto:  Developing an inexpensive record to keep vaccines cold in India to urge a rate of vaccination.
• Canadian Red Cross Society, Ottawa: Developing a respiration guard that helps village health workers to diagnose and provide pneumonia in Mali.
• McGill University, Montreal:  Using a tablet-based training module in Cambodia to urge baby caring among health workers, with an inducement for those who participate.
• The Research Institute of a McGill University Health Centre, Montreal: Developing a exam to urge diagnosis of illness in children in Malawi, The Gambia.
• McGill University, Montreal: Using iPad record to urge communication between nurses and farming village health workers operative with trusting mothers in Burkina Faso.
• Aerosan, Halifax: Processing fecal sludge from septic tanks and latrines into a cost-effective appetite source for a brick-making attention in Nepal.
• Aerosan, Halifax: Improving a business indication for open toilets in Nepal by capturing biogas from an anaerobic digester and offered it to internal businesses.
• Dalhousie University, Halifax: Providing a Helping Babies Survive training module to hospital workers in some areas of Jamaica.
• Sensoreal Inc., Montreal: A microchip that can detect a 4 many common gastrointestinal pathogens causing determined scour in children, obscure a genocide rate in Bangladesh.

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/grand-challenges-winners-maternal-health-1.4405592?cmp=rss