A stroke of genius doesn’t have to cost millions.
Often with just a bit of creativity and basic sensitivity to the needs of large swaths of the world’s population, inventions arise that save as many lives as dollars. Sometimes the resources exist in one country, while the market exists in another. Sometimes an idea is born out of dire need in one country and is applicable to other countries’ situations as well. All that inventors have to do is connect the international dots.
When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came to Georgetown a few weeks ago to open the U.S.-IndiaHigher Education Summit, she highlighted a group of U.S. and Indian graduate students who did just that. As an example of a success story in U.S.- India higher education cooperation, Clinton praised the efforts of students at Stanford University who, several years ago created the Embrace Infant Warmer, a low-cost alternative to the typical, expensive infant incubator we normally see in the U.S.
The warmer costs around $100, as compared to $20,000 for the traditional incubator, and is much smaller and easier to transport. It envelopes the newborn like a cocoon and does not require electricity, which many of the communities in need of it lack. After developing the Embrace Infant Warmer, the students, both Indian and American, moved to Bangalore and successfully launched the product in India. They say they hope to use their new incubator to help curtail preventable infant deaths in the developing world, which today amount to roughly 450 babies every hour.
Embrace Infant Warmer is an incredible example of how students from different countries can use the resources of one to address the immediate health care needs of the other. The case of Embrace, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. Developing nations have made great progress in the field of global health, precisely because they are driven to solve complicated problems with minimal resources. Quite a few countries that are considered part of the developing world are already beginning to assert themselves on the world stage in the field of global health, and the developed world is starting to listen.
Continuing with India’s healthcare creativity, Clinton could have mentioned Jaipur Foot, an organization in India that fits amputees with inexpensive yet durable and waterproof prosthetic limbs. Designed by an Indian physician in the late 1960s, they cost only $30-45, as opposed to the many thousands of dollars needed to produce a typical prosthetic limb in the U.S. For low-income amputees who simply need to be able to get around, Jaipur Foot’s economical and widely trusted innovations now improve the lives of 65,000 patients per year.
One of the heads of the organization, Devendra Raj Mehta, received his education at MIT and has now brought his education back to his home country. This would certainly support Clinton’s point about the necessity for cooperation between American and Indian higher education institutions. In addition, however, the experience of Mehta and Jaipur Foot takes us even one step further. By virtue of their position as developing nations, countries like India must combine creativity and thriftiness to deal with problems of health care, and the U.S. and other developed countries could certainly benefit from incorporating such an attitude into their own societies.
Developing countries certainly face staggering challenges in the arena of health. They confront issues of child malnutrition, infant mortality and the spread of infectious diseases on a scale that dwarfs anything in the developed world. But countries such as India, South Africa, Brazil and China are emerging as leaders in developing less expensive yet effective global health solutions and as examples for the rest of the developing world.
The role of the U.S.–India Higher Education Summit in all of this is twofold. First, it must encourage students from other countries, like the Indian graduate students at Stanford, to study at U.S. institutions where a wealth of resources will be available to them. Second, it must facilitate the exchange of U.S. students to the developing world to study innovations such as Jaipur Foot, so that these students absorb some of the creative thriftiness of these countries where resources may not be as plentiful but where global health solutions can still be conceived.
Sarah Stodder is a senior in the College. AN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT appears every other Friday.
