Category: Impact Journalism Day

Brilliance, a low-cost high quality phototherapy device has been designed and produced for the treatment of Jaundice in babies.

Over six million babies requiring treatment for severe jaundice each year are not receiving the treatment they need. When left untreated, severe jaundice can result in disability or death.

With the device which can be delivered through an economically self-sustaining distribution model, D-Rev, a non-profit medical device development company, aims to increase access to effective phototherapy throughout the developing world, reducing the number of deaths & disabilities due to untreated severe jaundice.

Launched in 2012, Brilliance Pro Classic and Brilliance Pro have  been used  in treating117,500 babies with jaundice in newborns in Nigeria and eight other countries

Out of the above number, 99,000 babies treated would not otherwise have received effective treatment, 1,500 newborn deaths and disabilities averted, 1,343 Brilliance units installed.

To make it user friendly, Brilliance is designed to be easily be integrated with other critical medical equipment such as infant warmers, incubators, and nearly any variety of bassinet.

Brilliance LEDs last 60x longer than compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) commonly used in phototherapy devices. With Brilliance, hospitals can save over $240 USD per year on costly bulb replacements. Also, Brilliance can withstand a wide range of power fluctuations without changes in device performance.

“We believe Brilliance Pro will help us reach further, giving under-served communities access to world-class healthcare and decreasing the number of newborns who die or are disabled as a result of severe jaundice,” said CEO of D-Rev, Krista Donaldson.

 

The hardest part for Lily Rayne was feeling alone.

Rayne is deaf and didn’t grow up with sign language. When she had suicidal thoughts, she couldn’t communicate or sign with a trained professional or a therapist. Nor could she pick up a phone to call a crisis hotline.

She eventually found help online by learning about cognitive behavioral therapy, but not before she had come dangerously close to taking her own life. Years later, she ran across a service that would have eased her sense of isolation in those dark hours: Crisis Text Line, which has brought the 1-800 support line into the age of texting.

Trained counselors, of whom Rayne is now one, are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to respond to people in need with SMS texts. The texts are anonymous and confidential.

“Crisis Text Line is not a replacement for mental health care, but when one feels completely overwhelmed, lost and alone, it’s a point of connection and a way to get to a more stable frame of mind,” Rayne said in an email interview.

“This is not really something deaf people have had access to before Crisis Text Line, in my opinion.”

In the three years since it was founded, the not-for-profit service

has exchanged nearly 17 million texts. The organization’s founder, Nancy Lublin, got the idea when working with teenagers, some of whom started to text her staff about issues like depression and rape.

Users of the service run the gamut. About 35% of the texts come from middle-aged people, many of whom are texting about their children, divorces or job troubles, according to Lublin.

As suicide rates have climbed to alarming levels — the highest in three decades — public health and CDC researchers agree that suicide prevention needs more resources. In 2013, more than 41,000 people in the United States committed suicide, according to statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

While hotlines have helped people in crisis for decades, communication methods have evolved. In the age of Snapchat and WhatsApp, talking on the phone can seem awkward or uncomfortable. For the hearing impaired, using a telephone can be tough or impossible. Even for people at ease talking on the phone, having conversations about mental health issues can put the user at risk of being overheard.

In 2013, Lublin, the CEO at a teenage outreach organization called

DoSomething.org, and her team sensed the shift in tech habits and started providing crisis counseling via text messaging.

The logic was simple: Go where the teens are. Teens on average receive and send about 30 text messages a day, according to a Pew Research Center study.

Through the volume of conversations, Crisis Text Line has gained insights into hard-to-quantify mental health topics such as suicidal thoughts, self harm and bullying.

It shares some of those data on Crisis Trends. It has found that suicidal thoughts tend to spike between 7 p.m and 9 p.m. Tuesdays are most common for texters who come for help about depression and physical abuse.

 Lublin expected that they’d help people in the throes of major crises, but she hadn’t anticipated how it would affect one community.

“The biggest surprise, which probably comes out of my own naivete,

is how the deaf and hard of hearing have flocked to us. But not only as texters but also as crisis counselors,” she said.

Rayne knows first-hand how removed she was from mainstream support networks.

Several years ago, a suicide attempt left her hospitalized.

“As a deaf person, getting help before it reached that point was a

challenge since I couldn’t call any of the hotlines,” she wrote in an email interview.

She couldn’t use the telecommunication device for the deaf, because

those devices tended to be “clunky and frustrating to use,” she said.

Rayne also found the hotlines for the hard of hearing were rarely answered. She struggled with anxiety and severe, chronic depression.

“I was pretty isolated socially, and found it too difficult to understand

therapists and doctors, so I was pretty much on my own.”

The text-based service provided an outlet for deaf and hard-of-hearing people, who hadn’t been able to use traditional hotlines. Relying on text messages meant that people who are deaf and hard of hearing could also volunteer their services.

It’s how Rayne first got involved. She read about Crisis Text Line on

a website and felt compelled to join. After years of struggling with mental health issues, she wanted to help others.

“I know what it’s like to not have somewhere to turn in a crisis, and

I don’t want others to have to feel that way,” Rayne said.

The steps to becoming a counselor are rigorous, requiring about 32 hours of live training and role-play scenarios. Rayne started volunteering in June 2015 and now works 12 hours a week.

In the spirit of Crisis Text Line, which doesn’t spend money on advertising itself, Rayne began telling others in the deaf community. The service now has more than 30 counselors who are deaf or hard of hearing.

For more information:

Crisis Text Line: Text 741-741 from anywhere in the USA, anytime, about any type of crisis.

Lifeline Crisis Chat: Chat online with a specialist who can provide emotional support, crisis intervention, and suicide prevention services

The natural refrigerator: preserving food and medicine in low-income communities

Inspired by an ancestral Moroccan design, natural clay-based refrigerators are being used as an ingenious solution to a variety of modern day problems. A young start-up company is aiming to provide these refrigerators to low-income communities without access to electricity, since they are designed to store both perishable foods and vital medicines – such as insulin – at low temperatures.

Like many women living without electricity in villages across Morocco, Fatima watches her family’s food supply constantly ruined by changes in temperature and humidity. Due to these circumstances far beyond her control, Fatima has learnt to organise both her and her family’s weekly food intake so as to minimize these losses. However, these practical alterations come with health-related consequences: an unbalanced diet, rich in fruits and vegetables just after market day, then heavy in starch and legumes towards the end of the week.

The ability to preserve food over a longer period of time is a vital necessity for both rural populations without access to electricity and for low-income suburban families.

“The idea for this project emerged when we noticed a need for natural refrigerators during a number of field trips made through Enactus (1), of which I am a member”, explains Raowia Lamhar, co-founder and CEO of Go Energyless. In early 2015, Raowia and her team created the first clay-based refrigerator prototype by collaborating with a local potter in Zenata, near the city of Mohammedia. This storage tool gives the user the ability to preserve food products for around 10 to 15 days, depending on the conditions.

In considering the physical and chemical needs of the clay they were using, as well as looking to work alongside potters with a higher level of expertise than those in Zenata, the Go Energyless team relocated to Marrakech. “When thinking about the quality we want, the clay of this particular region is more interesting to use and the two potters we are now working with are able to complete the task to much higher standards,” states Raowia.

Today, thanks to the implementation of this ancient cooling method, women like Fatima are able to cut down on around 20% of their expenses, as well as having access to a much more diverse food supply.

However, far from being a mere kitchen utensil, the natural refrigerator has also become an incredible solution to a far more critical problem: how to preserve medicines without electricity. Medicines such as insulin lose all of their effectiveness when they are not stored in the right conditions, away from strong light and heat sources. In certain regions of Morocco, where temperatures can reach above 50 degrees Celsius in the height of summer, a lack of refrigeration techniques can prove life threatening.

Ahmed, a native Moroccan from the Ahdri region near the city of Meknes, has already paid the price for this lack of local, available refrigeration. As a sufferer of diabetes, Ahmed used insulin that had been subject to heat damage, and was hospitalised for four days from a hyperglycemic coma. The only method he could think of to maintain his insulin at a low temperature was to bury the vile of medicine under a layer of soil before soaking the earth in water. This may have once been an efficient ancestral method of maintaining supply of drinking water, but its not exactly ideal for looking after a vital medicine such as insulin. With the natural refrigerator, our ability to preserve both medicine and food without electricity has been greatly improved, says Raowia.

Today, the start-up company is offering two different types of refrigerator. The first one is the more basic model, and is designed to cater for communities who do not have any access to electricity, costing around 220 DH (around 20 euros). The second, more aesthetically designed, model is aimed at biofuel-consumers, for a price of 350 DH (about 33 euros). These prices are calculated to cover the manufacturing costs.

Whilst still in the 5^th year of her engineering diploma, specialising in water engineering and the environment, Raowia has also taken on the title of entrepreneur. Go Energyless, the start-up company she co-founded and which is launching this cool (and cooling) project, has a plan to pick up its pace by implementing a strong marketing strategy and increasing the efficiency of its production process.

After the general release of 50 different prototypes in 2015, this young company is looking to increase its rate of production to meet a growing demand. To achieve both this and its other goals, Go Energyless wants the natural refrigerator to reach a wider audience, primarily by sourcing donors able to fund their distribution to some of the poorest communities, where the need is greatest.

(1) Enactus is an NGO member of the Enactus Worldwide network. Its mission is to engage young people in working with and improving society, as well as inspiring and developing future entrepreneurs.

The Khabia

The original idea behind the natural refrigerator came from a simple, ingenious tool called a ‘Khabia’, which has been used in certain areas of Morocco for centuries. This clay pot is used to keep water cool during the summer, and is normally covered with a wet cloth throughout the day. The refrigerator is composed of two clay pots of different sizes that can fit one inside the other with enough room for sand to be poured into the gap. The sand is then doused in water once or twice per day. As the water evaporates from the sand, heat cannot reach the internal pot, which therefore stays cool throughout the day.