Spotty access to wifi has actually turned into one of the best things about our time at home in the evenings. It’s given all of us more time to reflect on and discuss our experiences from the day, and we’re also able to get tons of great reading in. One of the books we’ve been passing around is The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa by Dayo Olopade, and it has given me an entirely new insight into how countries in Africa have been creating innovative market opportunities and economic growth in recent decades. It also delves into the dynamics of aid-based economics and the way that this approach can often be detrimental to the homegrown businesses and markets that are already in place.
One of Olopade’s main focuses in the book comes from the concept of kanju, the creative solutions that are common in resource-limited settings across many African countries. Tanya wrote a great blog on the kanju and several of the examples we’ve already seen of it here at Queens and in Blantyre, so definitely check out her post here to get a better idea of it!
The most interesting example I’ve seen of kanju, however, was during the maternal mortality meeting that I also spoke about in my last post. Hypothermia is always a huge concern for infants, and in delivery conditions that are not thermally regulated, helping babies maintain body temperature is a challenge that begins immediately after birth. While a technology design could theoretically fill this need, the amount of time that it would take to move from design through testing and development could span any number of years. In the meantime, however, babies still need help thermoregulating, and doctors and nurses are continually looking for interim solutions. A 2012 study at a South African hospital showed significantly improved outcomes for babies swaddled in a plastic bag after birth, and these babies had reduced incidence of complications from hypothermia. A single plastic bag at a grocery store costs 35MKW on average (~0.09 USD), and in bulk, that cost would likely shrink even further. The bags are an example of a readily available, low-cost resource that clinicians and nurses at Queens are able to use without having to wait for a technology to fill the existing gap.
This is just one example of how the hospital staff continually identifies creative, practical solutions to the challenges they face every day, and I’m interested to see how they begin to implement the idea in the delivery suite here and track its progress before next month’s meeting.