Preventing Drug Shortages With Cell Phones in Malawi

BALAKA, Malawi — Ishmael Katanga’s clinic is a small, two-room mud hut in southern Malawi that serves approximately 3,000 local residents. He sees roughly 15-20 patients per day, usually children under 5 years old suffering from malnutrition, malaria, dehydration and diarrhea. In treating these preventable diseases, one of Katanga’s biggest setbacks is access to medication and supplies.

Often, he has to turn patients away or encourage them to come back at a later time to receive their necessary medication. This scenario is common in rural clinics, where supplies and medications are scarce, causing what is known as a “stock out.”

Health Surveillance Assistants (HSAs) receive training on the cStock system.

That’s why the Malawi Ministry of Health (MOH), in partnership with public health research organizations such as John Snow, Inc. (JSI), has developed a mobile health program called cStock. It’s part of a larger project with the goal of finding affordable, simple and sustainable supply chain solutions that address the unique challenges of community health workers.

(From PBS NewsHour)

The radically simple Uniject™ injection system

Rethinking the needle to extend the reach of lifesaving vaccines and medications

What if syringes were so easy to use that even untrained health workers could give injections without the risk of error?

What if vaccines for developing countries could be prepackaged in low-cost prefilled syringes, vastly reducing the amount of vaccine wasted?

What if syringes could not be reused—and we knew for certain that gateway to HIV transmission was closed?

The Uniject™ autodisable injection system (Uniject), born in PATH’s Seattle shop, is little more than a small bubble of plastic attached to a needle, but it answers all these needs. It is so simple that health workers can learn to use it after less than two hours of training. It cannot be reused, which eliminates one route of disease transmission. And it is precisely prefilled by the pharmaceutical producers with a single dose, which ensures that the correct amount of drug is delivered and that none is discarded unnecessarily.

PATH developed Uniject with funding from the US Agency for International Development and then licensed the system to BD, the largest syringe manufacturer in the world. As part of the licensing agreement, BD supplies the Uniject system to pharmaceutical producers at preferential prices for use in developing-country programs. Developing Uniject and bringing it to market has been a 20-year endeavor.

Originally developed for use with vaccines, Uniject now promises to extend the reach of other lifesaving drugs as well as contraception.

Uniject is a trademark of BD.

(From PATH)

http://www.path.org/our-work/uniject.php

healthhorizons:

(via To Get Medicine to Africa, Health Experts Turn to Coca-Cola - Businessweek)

“Since September, more than 40,000 medicine kits designed to slip between Coke bottles stacked in a case have made the journey deep into the Zambian countryside. Called Kit Yamoyo, the packets were designed by London branding agency pi global for the U.K.-based health charity called ColaLife to fight one of sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest child killers, diarrhea. The kits, priced at the equivalent of $1, carry vital antidiarrheal medicine—a blister pack of zinc pills, oral rehydration salts—in a container that doubles as a mixing vessel. (The kit also carries a thin bar of soap.)”

nprglobalhealth:

Design A Better Condom And Bill Gates Will Give You $100k

Last summer Bill Gates and his foundation held a competition to reinvent the toilet. Now he’s hoping to do the same for condoms.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is putting up$100,000 to the best proposal for a more fun and pleasurable condom.

The competition is part of its Grand Exploration Challenges, which has already doled out nearly $50 million for quirky but effective solutions to global health problems, like microwaves to treat malaria and an electronic nose to detect tuberculosis.

But why do condoms need revamping? The Gates Foundation, which supports NPR, says that a lot of men perceive them as interfering with the pleasure of sex, and that means they won’t use them consistently. 

So the foundation is calling for new shapes, materials and packaging that “significantly preserve or enhance pleasure, in order to improve uptake and regular use.”

To get a sense of what kinds of ideas they’re keen on, have a look at the post he and a colleague recently wrote on The Impatient Optimists blog.

First, there are the ORIGAMI Condoms. Shaped like miniature accordions, these silicone rubbers fit loosely and aim to simulate the feeling of sex without a condom. They also boast a 2.8 seconds “application time,” the company’s website says, which presumably means they go on easily.

There is also something in the works for the ladies.

Continue reading.

Photo by ederk /iStockphoto.com

New CDC App Turns You Into A Disease Outbreak Detective

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released a free app for the iPad called “Solve the Outbreak.”

The app allows users to become an Epidemic Intelligence Service agent and examine a range of variables, based on factual information, in a burgeoning disease outbreak and make decisions much as a CDC decision-maker would. Should you quarantine the city?  Interview people who are sick? Request more results from the lab?

According to the CDC, the app comes with three outbreak scenarios, with more coming soon. Users can post their scores on Twitter and Facebook and challenge friends to do a better job at stemming the epidemic and saving more lives.

The agency says it is using social media to educate the public about diseases and to promote an appreciation for public health work.

You can download the free app from iTunes.

Tapping innovation in sanitation.