Oculostaple is a tool that is designed to restore vision in people with drooping eyelids, or ptosis. Ptosis can have any number of causes, from Myasthenia gravis (an autoimmune, neuromuscular disorder) to a stroke, a tumor, or simply old age.
It was designed by undergraduate students at Georgia Tech, Drew Padilla, Jacki Borinski, and Mohamad Ali Najia. Najia is now the CEO of the Oculostaple company.
The device works by simultaneously cutting away excess muscle and sealing up the cut that it creates. Before, correcting the issue was the result of a surgery that took about 45 minutes in an operating room. With Oculostaple, drooping eyelids can be resolved with local anesthesia in a doctor’s office, in a procedure that lasts about five minutes. It will also decrease the cost of each individual surgery by about $5,000.
Due to its impressive features, the Oculostaple recently received second place in the National Institute of Health Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) Challenge. The award, given to undergraduate students, was based on the impact the new invention would have on clinical care, the significance of the problem being addressed, the ingenuity of the design, and the creation of a prototype.
It’s not widely available just yet – the Oculostaple team is working with the Global Center for Medical Innovation (GCMI) to create it into a marketable medical device that will eventually be completely disposable.
GCMI is a nonprofit organization that brings together players in the medical device community to help “enhance their product development, shorten time to market, and potentially achieve significant cost savings” in the process of bringing the devices to market. Oculostaple also won first place last year at Georgia Tech’s fall Capstone Design Expo, and second place at its Inventure Prize competition.
While 200,000 Americans undergo surgery to correct drooping eyelids each year, the possibilities for this new device extend far beyond helping Americans be able to see better (and drive safer). Ophthalmologists throughout the medical community are excited for the device, which will make this surgery easy to perform. As the Oculostaple website states, it “also has broad applicability in laparoscopic, gastrointestinal, and biopsy procedures.”
Imagine the possibilities in treating diseases in poorer countries with the creation of technology like this. Gastrointestinal problems are common in third world countries, as people don’t always have access to clean water. Oculostaple could mean safer, faster, cheaper, and more effective treatment for a wide range of problems.
This surgical clamp removes the problem that sometimes occurs in eyelid surgery: the doctors accidentally cut their own sutures as they are trying to cut off excess muscle. Now, both parts of the procedure can be done simultaneously.
In an interview with Charlie Bennett, Najia described the process of how the device came to be, from the beginning, running tests on microwaved pieces of chicken skin, to redesigning the concept again and again, to being halfway out of the stadium with his teammates when their first place at their school’s Capstone competition was announced. Through it all, he said, “I think it’s been a very worthwhile endeavor.”
The development of a revolutionary device is an excellent example of how people throughout the medical community are working everyday to make a healthier world. Whether they are seasoned medical professionals or undergraduate students, they can make a difference, and they are.
– Emily Dieckman
Sources: Devices, NIH, Georgia Institute of Technology, News Medical, North Avenue Lounge, Oculostaple
Photo: Flickr
Humanitarian Data Exchange Speeds Up Relief Efforts
Humanitarian relief projects involve massive undertakings, and often organizations employ hundreds or even thousands of aid workers to get the job done. It’s no surprise then that relief efforts require huge amounts of logistic planning and coordination.
This can be difficult to achieve accurately and quickly as communication infrastructure may be downed or poorly developed to begin with.
Further, it is difficult to track the individual efforts of aid workers across large developing, or vastly affected regions. As a result, relief may be slow, disorganized, and ineffective. In order to deliver aid more quickly and efficiently, the UN has teamed up with San Francisco based tech company Frog to develop the Humanitarian Data Exchange, or HDX for short.
The goal of the project is to streamline humanitarian data. In the past, relief workers compiled thousands of documents and data points in a variety of formats. The HDX standardizes the methods in which data is entered and collected, thus making finding specific data points easier with less crucial time wasted.
The HDX contains numerous data points, most complied by aid workers on the ground. The network can be accessed from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection. Users then search for a specific dataset using a basic search engine.
The data includes region-specific populations, available medical services and their inventories, national poverty indexes, the number of homeless in the area, and hundreds of others.
The UN first implemented the HDX in West Africa during the Ebola epidemic. Currently, aid workers coordinating earthquake relief efforts are most actively using the HDX in Nepal.
The HDX has currently 76 different datasets for Nepal; many of these include maps and topographical information, as remote Nepalese regions are difficult to traverse due to limited infrastructure.
Nepal is not the only country benefitting from more efficient aid; the HDX lists data in 244 locations. Data is available to the public as well, and can be found at their website.
– Joe Kitaj
Sources: Forbes 1, Forbes 2, RW Labs
Photo: Forbes
One Direction Releases Film to End Poverty
Celebrities are constantly in the public eye and every move they make, from where they ate breakfast to who they might be dating, is highlighted in the media. So, when celebrities use their voices to make a positive difference in the world, it does not go unnoticed and it has the power to bring on major change.
Earlier this summer, One Direction launched their action/1D campaign, as part of action/2015, a powerful movement that believes 2015 is the year of creating concrete plans to eradicate extreme poverty, promote justice and equality and fight climate change.
Action/1D encouraged the millions of One Direction fans around the world to submit videos of themselves describing the type of world they would like to live in, in alignment with these plans.
Two months and 80,000 submissions later, action/1D released “Dear World Leaders,” a unique and compelling film composed of young people from 172 countries explaining what they like about the world, but what needs to change.
Calling on international leaders to end extreme poverty, promote universal education, provide clean, safe water for all people and end world hunger, “Dear World Leaders” features today’s youth touching upon many of the Global Goals, a set of 17 initiatives that align with the action/2015 movement.
Action/1D and “Dear World Leaders” provided young people around the world with the opportunity to contribute to important global conversations and movements. The youth of today are the future of tomorrow, so it is inspiring to see how much they care about current events and improving the world.
Now, One Direction is promoting “Dear World Leaders” through social media and on their “On the Road Again” tour, while also encouraging the public to share the film and the hashtag #action1D on social media platforms. Already, #action1D has reached 2.5 billion hits and trended on Twitter for 11 hours after the initial launch of the project.
One Direction unites their harmonic voices to make an important change in the world and impose a lasting difference that will ultimately improve the quality of life for many people. In the public eye, they have the power to raise awareness and gain support in the fight against extreme global poverty.
– Sarah Sheppard
Sources: Global Citizen, Look to the Stars 1 , Look to the Stars 2
Photo: Flickr
UN Report: Overall Global Poverty Has Dropped Dramatically
The U.N.’s 2015 Millennium Development Goals Report, which was released earlier this month, has published findings that show a sharp improvement in overall global poverty.
The U.N.’s report highlights the progress that has been made since their Millennium Development Goals were first established in 2000. This plan, which set targets and timeframes for how to make an impact in global poverty by 2015, has ultimately been remarkably successful.
“What the goals did, by prioritizing and focusing, was actually put together major international donors, civil society partners on the ground, national governments focusing on the same sets of issues,” Mark Suzman, a U.N. official, told NPR. “And that allowed for a focusing of both policy change and resources and attention.”
The report highlights a number of significant changes that have been made since its inception over a decade ago. According to the report, the amount of people living in extreme poverty has dropped to less than half of what it was in 1990, from 1.9 billion to 836 million. The report also points out that overall primary school enrollment in developing regions has reached 91 percent.
“The report confirms that the global efforts to achieve the goals have saved millions of lives and improved conditions for millions more around the world,” said U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The report doesn’t shy away from the work that still needs to be done, however. The report’s findings also include the fact that around one billion people still defecate in the open and 28 percent of children in South Asia younger than five can be classified as “moderately or severely underweight.”
“These successes should be celebrated throughout our global community,” Ki-moon added. “At the same time, we are keenly aware of where we have come up short.”
– Alexander Jones
Sources: Aizenman, Economic Times, Sengupta
Life Size Lego: Turning Rubble into Homes
One of the largest and most difficult tasks that aid workers face in disaster relief is finding those affected shelters. When disaster strikes, it either forces people out of their homes or reduces residences to piles of rubble. As for the governments of the affected regions, there exists the enormously expensive logistical challenge of clean up. Structural debris and rubble are the largest solid polluter by volume. One Dutch company may have found a single solution to both of these problems.
The Mobile Factory is, as the name suggests, a compact, and portable concrete production facility. It fits into two standard size shipping containers, and can be sent anywhere in the world with relative ease. It is solar powered as well, and thus can be operated in areas with limited or damaged power grids.
Rubble is fed into the factory and it emerges as liquid concrete. This is only the first step. The concrete is then taken and molded into standardized bricks, called Q-Brixx, that resemble large Lego bricks.
Mobile Factory has pledged to instruct users in how to use the life size lego bricks to build, modestly sized, earthquake-proof shelters. The device allows communities to safely and affordably rebuild, while also removing environmentally and physically hazardous debris.
Mobile Factory is currently being tested on a small scale in Haiti. The 2010 earthquake left 1.3 million Haitians without a home and many of its towns decimated. The Mobile Factory is testing its product where it might be needed most.
The test village is being conducted in a town of 30 families. In addition to receiving Mobile Factory homes, the families are also being instructed in the factory’s operation and how to build the homes. Mobile Factory hopes that this instructional program will empower communities to teach each other how to rebuild.
– Joe Kitaj
Sources: IndieGoGo, The Chive, The Mobile Factory
Photo: The Chive
Kenyan Schoolgirls Dedicate a Poem to Water
Kenyan schoolgirls wrote a poem about water; it meant two beautiful things. One, the girls were receiving a quality education. And, two, their community was given access to healthy sanitation.
“Dear Water” expresses the gratitude the girls have for the newly drilled borehole in their community, which has made their community cleaner and safer. In the poem, the girls describe the great lengths they used to travel to get water, time that would take away from their education. Now, the new source of water has given them more time for studies, eliminated preventable diseases and made a huge difference in many lives.
According to World Vision, a child under five dies every 90 seconds due to diarrhea caused by contaminated water and poor sanitation. Easily accessible and clean water eliminates avoidable deaths. Providing healthy sanitation for people around the world must become a priority in order to break the cycle of extreme poverty.
After gaining access to clean water, the girls were nothing but grateful. Beautifully written and recited, the poem proves the power of quality education. Education also has the power to break the cycle of poverty and contributes to a sustainable lifestyle for many girls. Secondary education reduces the rates of child marriage, therefore lowering the risk of HIV and AIDS in girls and provides the opportunity for girls to work and earn a wage.
Clean water is vital to healthy living and accurately depicted in “Dear Water” as a blessing. Clean water prevents diseases, ensures hydration and provides quality sanitation. When placed directly in a community, it eliminates the need to walk miles and miles to reach it, freeing valuable time for school and guaranteeing that children receive an education, which in addition to healthy sanitation is a key component in ending global poverty.
– Sarah Sheppard
Sources: Global Citizen, World Vision, YouTube,
Photo: World Vision
Maternal Instinct: Indian Women Take on a Corrupt Medical System
A group of 40 volunteers is cracking down on the corrupt medical system in India and taking a stand against the country’s soaring rate of maternal deaths.
Prenatal care at government-run medical facilities is supposed to be free of charge, but as Monika Singh discovered, not every woman is aware of this, and some doctors are more than willing to exploit their ignorance.
“Why are you charging for medicine? It’s supposed to be free for pregnant women in a government hospital,” challenged Singh when a doctor tried to make an ill mother-to-be pay for her medicine.
Armed with Nokia phones and a list of codes, Singh and fellow volunteers routinely visit a number of villages, interviewing expecting and new mothers and families. Using simple numeric codes, interviewees can text the volunteer’s details of their pregnancy and related care. For example, texting the number 25 means no ambulance was available when needed.
Cases of women being turned away from hospitals, women being extorted and forced to bribe their way to treatment, and even cases of women dying on the way to the hospital after being denied treatment at multiple clinics are just a few of the examples of the rampant corruption of the Indian medical system.
An estimated 50,000 women in India die each year from pregnancy-related causes, accounting for 17 percent of global maternal deaths each year. While there are countries with much higher rates of maternal death, the sheer volume of annual maternal deaths is unprecedented.
Aside from malnutrition and a lack of enforcement of laws meant to protect expecting mothers, many women say they are too afraid to pursue their rights, even when they know them. “They don’t have the courage to pursue their rights proactively. That’s the challenge,” said Singh. But the presence of volunteers is encouraging more women to speak out about the injustices they have faced.
Improvements have been seen, however, since Singh and her fellow volunteers took to the streets. Working with the End Maternal Mortality Now (EndMMNow) scheme, the volunteers say it is now the doctors who are afraid of them, not the other way around.
“The workers fear these volunteers. They’re afraid they will report a case about them, so now they do their jobs properly,” said Arpana Choudhury, who follows up on reported cases.
The EndMMNow program compiles the reports that they receive to create an interactive map, clearly showing areas needing the most urgent attention, hoping that a clear depiction of the need for reform will prompt much-needed government attention.
– Gina Lehner
Sources: The Guardian, WHO
Photo: Flickr
Six Instagram Accounts to Follow for a Glimpse of Global Poverty
Instagram is a social media outlet that allows users all around the world to share photos. The social network has more than 300 million monthly active users in a world that is captivated by visuals. Although Instagram can serve as an announcement for what’s for dinner, it has been influential in allowing people across continents a glimpse into one another’s lives.
An important aspect of Instagram is its ability to make those whom we will never meet relatable to us. This aspect can be applied to A-list celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Hugh Jackman, as well as to the poor villagers in North Africa. Instagram can humanize the poor and mobilize the able.
Listed below are a few Instagram accounts that do an excellent job showing the beauty as well as the tragic poverty of developing countries.
1. Lynsey Addario @lynseyaddario
American Photo Magazine named Lynsey Addario, currently living in London, one of the five most influential photographers in the past 25 years.
2. Marcus Bleasdale @marcusbleasdale
Marcus Bleasdale is a documentary photographer working in the Central African Republic. His coverage of poverty-stricken conflict zones has earned him the Amnesty International Award for Media 2014.
3. Andrew Quilty @andrewquilty
Andrew Quilty is an Australian documentary photographer working in Afghanistan.
4. Phil Moore @philmoorephoto
Phil Moore is a British freelance photographer documenting life in Burundi.
5. Everyday Africa @everydayafrica
Everyday Africa is a project started by Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill to show what life in Africa is really like. The account features many African and non-African photographers in their daily lives.
6. Everyday Asia @everydayasia
Everyday Asia is based after Everyday Africa, showing what life in different parts of Asia is like.
– Iona Brannon
Sources: Global Insider, Lynsey Addario, Marcus Bleasdale, Andrew Quilty, Phil Moore, Everyday Africa
Photo: Everyday Africa
Surfing Waves Aids Communities in Peru and Nicaragua
WAVES for Development International, founded toward the end of 2004, is a nonprofit organization based in Peru whose mission is to connect tourists and surfers to volunteer opportunities and grassroots initiatives to effectively work together in communities in both Peru and Nicaragua.
One of WAVES commanding principles is to inspire world travel and cultural exchange through surfing as well as spreading social entrepreneurship, healthy living and life skills. WAVES stands for water, adventure, voluntourism, education and sustainability, which encompasses the organization’s five pillars of beliefs and goals.
Water and adventure are associated with the thrill of surfing, something the members of WAVES for Development International live their lives doing. The made up word, voluntourism, captures their goal of connecting tourists with volunteer opportunities to give back to the communities they visit.
These volunteer activities assist locals with education and sustainability, two concepts the organization believes are needed for places to thrive. With the belief that education is highly important in poorer communities, WAVES uses natural and local resources to help developing communities educate their youth and empower them to create bigger and better things.
Another belief they act upon is there are four main aspects to sustainability; ecological, economic, social and political. WAVES’ projects work to assist communities in environmental conservation, safe economic and political practices and to bring the community together as a whole to help with the projects and celebrate their culture.
WAVES connects tourists with volunteer activities in three different categories; surf voluntourism, which allows people to volunteer in surfing communities in Peru and Nicaragua, advocacy and education, where volunteers assist with educating youth to become effective leaders and network of partnerships, in which the volunteerism focuses on the overall convergence of people and organizations who work together to make the world a better place.
The WAVES team consists of volunteers from all over the world, including Spain, South America, Africa and the United States. Team members have come together to assist developing communities in Peru in an effort to bring a new force of individuals to the world.
While the organization was created in Peru and primarily helps communities there and in Nicaragua, WAVES for Development International has recently teamed up with members in and around Montreux, Switzerland to form WAVES Peru and WAVES Switzerland, allowing the two to reach a wider audience and give back to more communities through their shared love of surfing.
– Julia Hettiger
Sources: WAVES, Volunteer Match, Great Nonprofits
Photo: Flickr
How The Water Project Empowers Girls
In many rural communities throughout sub-Saharan Africa, hundreds of people are unable to access safe, clean water, suffering from several different diseases and illnesses as a result. Relying predominantly on women and girls to walk miles away from home to collect water – dirty water that makes them and their families sick – the communities are gender biased and women are not considered as important as men.
Unclean water and gender inequality limits the potential of many people and communities, and contributes to the cycle of extreme poverty.
The Water Project, however, is determined to change this. A nonprofit organization that brings sustainable water projects to communities in sub-Saharan Africa, The Water Project provides those communities with access to clean water and the means to maintain proper sanitation.
Admirably, the organization seeks to instill hope in suffering communities by making clean water the norm. Clean water improves health, breaks down poverty and supports education.
Lack of access to clean water and proper sanitation, however, is the primary reason that girls drop out of school. They spend valuable learning time walking to streams or ponds to gather water, only to eventually drink it and get sick. The Water Project, however, empowers girls by bringing safe, clean water to their communities.
In addition to improved health conditions, clean water strengthens opportunities for quality education. Access to safe water ensures that girls remain in school, which opens the door to future careers and earned wages. Because women reinvest up to 90 percent of their income back into their households, compared to 40 percent by men, this is imperative.
The efforts of The Water Project have inevitably taught communities to see the value of women and potential of girls. It has unlocked a generation of leaders. Education provides endless opportunities, but clean water liberates, encourages and inspires.
– Sarah Sheppard
Photo: The Water Project
Oculostaple: A Medical Device Revolution
Oculostaple is a tool that is designed to restore vision in people with drooping eyelids, or ptosis. Ptosis can have any number of causes, from Myasthenia gravis (an autoimmune, neuromuscular disorder) to a stroke, a tumor, or simply old age.
It was designed by undergraduate students at Georgia Tech, Drew Padilla, Jacki Borinski, and Mohamad Ali Najia. Najia is now the CEO of the Oculostaple company.
The device works by simultaneously cutting away excess muscle and sealing up the cut that it creates. Before, correcting the issue was the result of a surgery that took about 45 minutes in an operating room. With Oculostaple, drooping eyelids can be resolved with local anesthesia in a doctor’s office, in a procedure that lasts about five minutes. It will also decrease the cost of each individual surgery by about $5,000.
Due to its impressive features, the Oculostaple recently received second place in the National Institute of Health Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) Challenge. The award, given to undergraduate students, was based on the impact the new invention would have on clinical care, the significance of the problem being addressed, the ingenuity of the design, and the creation of a prototype.
It’s not widely available just yet – the Oculostaple team is working with the Global Center for Medical Innovation (GCMI) to create it into a marketable medical device that will eventually be completely disposable.
GCMI is a nonprofit organization that brings together players in the medical device community to help “enhance their product development, shorten time to market, and potentially achieve significant cost savings” in the process of bringing the devices to market. Oculostaple also won first place last year at Georgia Tech’s fall Capstone Design Expo, and second place at its Inventure Prize competition.
While 200,000 Americans undergo surgery to correct drooping eyelids each year, the possibilities for this new device extend far beyond helping Americans be able to see better (and drive safer). Ophthalmologists throughout the medical community are excited for the device, which will make this surgery easy to perform. As the Oculostaple website states, it “also has broad applicability in laparoscopic, gastrointestinal, and biopsy procedures.”
Imagine the possibilities in treating diseases in poorer countries with the creation of technology like this. Gastrointestinal problems are common in third world countries, as people don’t always have access to clean water. Oculostaple could mean safer, faster, cheaper, and more effective treatment for a wide range of problems.
This surgical clamp removes the problem that sometimes occurs in eyelid surgery: the doctors accidentally cut their own sutures as they are trying to cut off excess muscle. Now, both parts of the procedure can be done simultaneously.
In an interview with Charlie Bennett, Najia described the process of how the device came to be, from the beginning, running tests on microwaved pieces of chicken skin, to redesigning the concept again and again, to being halfway out of the stadium with his teammates when their first place at their school’s Capstone competition was announced. Through it all, he said, “I think it’s been a very worthwhile endeavor.”
The development of a revolutionary device is an excellent example of how people throughout the medical community are working everyday to make a healthier world. Whether they are seasoned medical professionals or undergraduate students, they can make a difference, and they are.
– Emily Dieckman
Sources: Devices, NIH, Georgia Institute of Technology, News Medical, North Avenue Lounge, Oculostaple
Photo: Flickr