Product/Service Development

Chris de Villiers of Sinapi Biomedical in South Africa will produce an improved sample container that ensures sputum samples are of sufficient quantity and quality to diagnose tuberculosis (TB). South Africa has one of the highest burdens of TB, and has implemented a rapid testing program that diagnoses the disease from sputum. However, over 8% (around 218,000) of sputum samples cannot be tested, largely due to insufficient volumes or leaky sample containers. This causes additional costs and leaves many sufferers undiagnosed.

Tatiana Salisbury of King's College London in the United Kingdom along with colleagues at the Royal College of Art in the United Kingdom and the Manhiça Health Research Centre in Mozambique will develop a strategy to improve the mental health of young mothers in Mozambique by adapting existing technology-based and group-based methods to teach them life skills such as parenting and social skills. Almost half of Mozambican girls have had a baby by the time they are 18 years old.

Anne Marie Chomat of McGill University in Canada will design an intervention to overcome the mental health problems faced by young mothers in Guatemala by engaging them, along with their partners and fathers, elders, and adolescents in their communities, in order to address the complex factors affecting maternal health. Women in Maya indigenous areas of Guatemala, which has recently faced a civil war, experience particularly high rates of poverty, gender inequality, adolescent births, and mental health disorders.

Jan Willem Alffenaar of the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands will develop two simple tests that measure the concentration of anti-tuberculosis drugs in treated patients in low-resource settings in order to optimize dosage and limit the emergence of deadly multi-drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MDR-TB). The increased incidence of MDR-TB is due in part to low levels of anti-tuberculosis drugs, thus dosage optimization during treatment is important. However, doing this in low-resource settings is currently challenging.

Agnes Ronan, from Pediatric Adolescent Treatment Africa, in South Africa will develop a training and supervision tool for young health workers that combines screening and support in an accessible format to reduce depression in HIV-positive, adolescent mothers. There are an estimated two million adolescent mothers living with HIV in Africa, and stigma prevents many of them accessing health care. Young HIV-positive peer supporters work in local clinics and use informal chats, text messages, and home visits to support HIV-positive adolescents.

Gerard Cangelosi of the University of Washington in the U.S. will develop reagents to visually validate oral swabs and stabilize them for storage and transport to diagnostic laboratories in low-resource settings without the need for a cold chain. Oral swabbing to extract saliva is a non-invasive and effective method for diagnosing tuberculosis, and is faster and safer than traditional sputum collection. However, it is more difficult to review the quality of a swab sample as they are hard to see, and processing currently requires refrigeration.

Tara Hopkins of Mali Health in the U.S. will develop methods to improve vaccination coverage in rural communities in southern Mali by engaging community health workers together with traditional birth attendants who are present during home births. In southern Mali, particularly in rural communities, most children are born at home, so they are not registered with a health clinic or present for critical childhood vaccinations.

Günther Fink of the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Switzerland will develop a mobile phone-based system to improve the registration of births and the timeliness of childhood vaccinations in Ghana. Particularly in Northern Ghana, many women give birth at home and are less likely to ensure their infants get vaccinated on time, which exposes them to severe infectious diseases such as polio. Even in these low-resource settings, mobile phones are common, and have been successfully used to encourage healthy behavior.

Apostolos Alissandratos of the Australian National University in Australia will develop a biotechnology platform for the low-cost production of simple, just-add-water diagnostic tests for the early detection of infectious diseases in resource-limited settings. Diagnosis of infectious diseases generally involves detecting pathogen-specific nucleic acids in human samples, which requires unstable reagents, costly procedures, and skilled workers. They have engineered a safe bacterium that produces the biochemical reagents needed to detect the pathogenic nucleic acids as an extract.

Brandon Kohrt of George Washington University in the U.S. will develop a tool using sensors associated with mobile phones that can identify and monitor young mothers suffering from perinatal depression in low-resource settings in Nepal so that personalized psychological treatments can be provided. The tool comprises a mobile phone for the mother and a small Bluetooth beacon attached to the baby's clothes. It can record location via GPS, the proximity between phone and beacon, and sound.