Noncommunicable Diseases

Most rape victims feel they cannot report. Our project in South Africa will develop inexpensive, user-friendly self-interviewing devices to help communities identify and dismantle their unique barriers to reporting, ultimately ending the impunity that protects rapists and sustains HIV.

    Injuries affect more than 50 million people worldwide each year. Often, surgery is the only appropriate treatment. Developing countries suffer from a lack of simple, cost-effective and affordable surgical care and this causes a high rate of preventable deaths.   Innovators of University of Toronto have developed a low-cost, reusable, and easy to use closure kit for large wounds that robustly provides a 100% closure rate. The portable kit can be carried out to patients in any situation and doctors can use the kit in rural villages without hospitals.

Skin is the largest organ and forms a protective barrier against the external environment. At the same time, skin is very vulnerable. When severe skin loss occurs, normal wound healing cannot reconstitute the skin, requiring multiple interventions. The high cost and elevated morbidity associated with current clinical procedures, especially in developing countries, motivated innovators at University of Toronto to develop a bold skin printing approach.

The Burn Survival Kit (BSK) is an inexpensive, sustainable solution to burns in low-income countries. The kit contains oral rehydration salts for restoring lost fluids, a silver nanotubule dressing to prevent infection and a connection to a burn unit via a text messaging database. End-users are guided by a wordless instruction manual.

Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) are the leading cause of death and disability among young people in Sub-Saharan Africa (ages 15 – 29). Report 2 Save will develop a system that acquires real-time data on RTAs through the use of crowdsourcing techniques, and will make it readily available to all stakeholders.

Road Traffic Accident: A Neglected Public Health Crisis

Most road traffic crashes in Kenya are in populated areas with high socioeconomic activities that demand considerable transport. Our project will motivate riders and passengers to practice road safety using a four-pronged approach of educate, change, enforce and reward through curriculum training and a phone app.

Reduction of child drowning in a Bangladesh community by introduction of low cost, effective, culturally sensitive, community selected interventions for children age 1-4 and 5-14 yrs old, then scale this up to a broader region of at-risk children.

OneBreath aims to commercialize a high-precision, highly reliable, low-cost, mechanical ventilator to fill a critical healthcare gap in India, where respiratory illness is a leading cause of hospitalization and death.  Over 50% of the world's pneumonia deaths occur in India, where ventilators remain out of reach for many hospitals.

The World Health Organization estimates that 20 to 50 million people each year are injured in traffic accidents. About 90% occur in low- and middle-income countries, where resources for treatment are insufficient. Commercial power tools are widely available but expensive ($30,000 or more) surgical equipment is often unavailable, while donated surgical drills fail in low-resource settings because technical support and replacement parts are unavailable. The end result: permanent disability for many.