Product/Service Development

Fighting insect-borne diseases and enriching urban agricultural land by using molasses: a common by-product from sugar factories This innovation allows the use of one single technology to address both health issues and agricultural productivity. Researchers at the Ifakara Health Institute will create a cheap CO2 production line through fermentation of molasses, a sugar production by-product. This approach not only establishes disease vector surveillance and control, it can also use the fermentation residues to enrich urban agricultural lands.

Some five to 10 per cent of African children with a serious infection die in hospital. Alarmingly, an even higher percentage of children die in the weeks after their discharge. Doctors and parents are often unaware of this period of high vulnerability and are poorly equipped to identify or handle recurrent illness. A mobile phone application developed by this project for hospital use will help to identify at-risk children who need referral to a community health worker, while parents will receive a discharge kit to help guide care for their recovering child.

Increasing the detection, confirmation and treatment of children with tuberculosis in Ethiopia - technology meets social justice.

The idea is to stop schistosomiasis (affecting 790 million people) using a combination of chemotherapy and parasite extinction, latter to be accomplished through restoring the population of indigenous freshwater prawns to rural waterways in endemic regions of Africa. These prawns are natural predators of aquatic snails that harbor schistosomiasis. Follow Nicolas Jouanard on Twitter @ProjetCrevette"

We are implementing research to control filariasis vector, Culex quinquefasciatus, using biolarvicides and oviposition attractants in Mafia, Tanzania. Our research will utilize pheromones to attract Culex quinquefasciatus to lay eggs in biolarvicides treated water bodies to control the vector and accelerates lymphatic filariasis elimination.

Human liver flukes, O. viverrini, O. felineus and C. sinensis remain important public health problems in many parts of the world. Recent reports suggested that about 35 million people are infected with C. sinensis globally; with up to 15 million human infections in China and another 8--10 million individuals infected with O. viverrini in Thailand and Laos Three years ago Dr. Sripa and colleagues initiated a pilot project (The Lawa Model) in the Lawa Lakes region of Khon Kaen employing this integrated, bottom-up approach.

This project will empower indigenous people in Sayaxche, Guatemala with knowledge and tools to use a modified "ovitrap" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovitrap) that effectively destroys mosquito eggs, thereby reducing malaria, dengue fever and other diseases. In a pilot study last year in Mexico that used only 50 modified ovitraps, more than 350,000 mosquito eggs were destroyed during one year, representing a reduction of 70–80% of mosquito eggs compared to unmodified traps.

In Tanzania, the Africa Technical Research Institute will lead the design and manufacture of attractive, affordable insecticide-treated clothing. Treated fashions attract consumers while repelling vectors. Personal protection as clothing or accessories can be used indoors, outdoors, day or night, to reduce vector transmission. Affordable designs create consistent demand for locally manufactured styles.

A simple way to lure, trap and kill malarial mosquitos with a deadly fruit meal in a device easy to make at home from plastic drink bottles.  Manufacture of the traps creates a potential village income opportunity.

This innovative fabric mosquito trap fitted into a window works like a lobster trap: the insect enters easily through a funnel but cannot escape, offering a way to control malaria with an environmentally-friendly technology that can be easily and broadly manufactured.