Africa: An Enduring Commitment

Since we established Rice 360°, Rice University's Institute for Global Health Technologies, in 2007 as a Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action, we have visited many hospitals and clinics across the developing world. We always ask to see the neonatal unit. By now, the scene is familiar: The ward is shabby and crowded. Many of the babies are sick or premature, but the technologies that could help them - incubators, phototherapy lights to treat jaundice, and ventilators, for example - are broken, idle, or unavailable. In some of these units, even sheets and blankets are scarce. Instead, the babies rely on competent physicians, caring nurses, and vigilant mothers to make it through the first weeks of their lives. While the doctors and nurses have an extraordinary commitment to their tiny patients, without critical health technologies, many babies die. Twenty-five percent of the world's children who die each year die within the first week of life.

Students and faculty in Rice 360° have worked to design a Nursery of the Future, a set of technologies to give newborns in the developing world life-saving support. The technologies are durable and inexpensive, and they can be repaired using local materials instead of specialized parts. The Nursery of the Future includes, for example, a warming crib made of plywood, Plexiglass, and light bulbs; phototherapy lights; and a continuous positive airway pressure machine that supports babies in breathing when their lungs are underdeveloped or weak.

For a district hospital serving 300,000 people in the developing world, a Nursery of the Future could be outfitted with these and other technologies for about $5,000. This is less than the cost of a typical ventilator in the United States.

In Malawi this summer, two of Rice 360°'s students are working with Elizabeth Molyneux, an extraordinary physician who is already caring for babies in her neonatal unit with some of the technologies of the Nursery of the Future. Dr. Molyneux has worked with our students at every stage of development -- offering them ideas for new innovations, advising them, and giving them feedback on how to improve their designs. This summer, our students will demonstrate and evaluate their technologies, learning how the designs can be refined to help Dr. Molyneux and her colleagues deliver the most effective care they can. These technologies represent some of the great progress Rice 360? has made. Now, we have a new vision: in five years, we want to walk into a hospital in Malawi we have never visited, and see a nursery in which babies are growing healthier and stronger with the help of our technologies. Instead of hearing mothers in the halls of the hospital singing hymns to mourn the passing of a baby, we want to hear them singing in celebration of a birth. With our extraordinary students and partners, we know this dream is within our reach.

Lauren Vestewig is the executive director, Rice 360°: Institute for Global Health Technologies.