Rice and the Poly

Posted on July 12, 2015July 12, 2015 by Emily

As Sarah, Catherine and I have gotten to know Christina, Andrew, Francis and Charles better, we have had more opportunities to compare our lives at university and our different cultures. Our friendship has given me an opportunity to learn a lot about Malawi, and it has made me much more appreciative of the place and people I’m visiting. Here are a few cultural differences and similarities that we have discovered that I think are particularly interesting:

Differences:

Getting in to University

In most schools in the US, you apply to the university as a whole, or maybe to a particular school such as the school of engineering or social sciences. If you are accepted, you have the flexibility of choosing your major within the university or school to which you applied. If you decide to switch majors under that domain, it is relatively easy to do so.

When I was accepted to Rice, I first got an email with my acceptance and some information about what to expect. A few days later I received a letter in the mail, with confetti, a letter of acceptance, and congratulations. I remember getting the email and later the letter and being ecstatic about the prospect of starting a Rice career.

When applying to a university in Malawi, you rank the top three major programs you are interested in pursuing. Admissions staff will compare your test scores and performance in secondary school, and you will be accepted into one of the three choices. If you wish to change majors or schools, you must reapply and qualify for the new choice separately.

Acceptance to different university programs are announced over the radio. Secondary students will tune in at a certain date and time, and the broadcaster will announce the university and the program for which they are naming the accepted students. They will then say the names of the students and the secondary schools they come from. Using the radio would allow students who may not have a mailing address or consistent access to the internet to find out whether or not they got in to college. Our friends at the Poly have told us that when they got in to the electrical engineering program at the Poly, they were equally as thrilled as I was when I got into Rice.

Perceptions of Malaria

In Malawi, Malaria is an extremely common disease. Much like the flu in the US, it is understood to be dangerous but also seen every year. Francis, Christina, Charles and Andrew told me that getting Malaria happens at least every few years for each of them, and that it’s not that big a deal when it happens. If they get malaria, they go to the health clinic to get medicine and they try to get more sleep and just wait it out. Christina said that the worst time is the very first time you get sick, because your body has no immunity to the virus. After that, your body becomes better at responding when you are infected, and typically you may have to miss a few days or maybe a couple weeks of school before you’re back on your feet. I was told that everyone sleeps under a mosquito net every night preventatively, and that the government even provides a mosquito net to babies when they are born in the clinics.

I’m sure it’s needless to say that Sarah, Catherine and I have a very different understanding of Malaria. This is largely because it doesn’t exist in the US, and because it’s a very popular conversation topic among global health workers and development agencies. We learned in our global health classes that malaria is one of the top killers in developing nations around the world, including Malawi. Although we weren’t wrong in being concerned about the severity of the disease, It was an interesting difference between Malawian and American perspectives to learn how malaria is also a part of everyday life. Malaria is dangerous, but it doesn’t inspire nearly as much fear in my Malawian friends as it does in Sarah, Catherine and myself.

Similarities:

Girls in Engineering

Things are changing in the US, but there is still a large unbalance between the number of women who pursue careers in engineering as opposed to the number of men. According to the National Science Foundation, women made up only 18.6% of the enrolled undergraduate population pursuing an engineering discipline in 2011. At Rice, there’s evidence that the problems still exist, but things are moving in the right direction; Sarah told us that there are only six out of nearly forty rising juniors in the electrical engineering department that are girls, although my year of in the bioengineering department is Rice’s first class with more women than men.

At the Poly, the gender gap is also pretty apparent. Christina says she’s one of three girls that started in first year and will continue to complete their fifth years in electrical engineering, out of about forty students. Most of the engineering faculty we’ve met are men. However, Christina also told us about outreach programs she’s involved in that goes to local secondary schools and inspires girls to pursue engineering and other STEM fields. When we visited Jacaranda primary and secondary school, Christina delivered some very inspirational words to the girls in the audience about working hard towards dreams of careers in math and science.

Social Media

One of the biggest similarities between Rice students and Poly students that I’ve seen is the use of social media. Andrew told me that Facebook is pretty common among his friends and classmates, along with Instagram and WhatsApp. Social media is very essential during the year at Rice, and it’s been my tool the past six weeks to let me keep in touch with family and friends. The happiest part about our shared habitual usage of social media is that it will allow Sarah, Catherine and me to keep in contact with Charles, Francis, Andrew and Christina when we leave. If pursued smartly, social media connections could be a great way to facilitate communication between Rice and Poly students in the future, especially since the common practice of daily use is already set in place.

“Relief from pain and suffering is a human right.” –WHO 1990

Posted on July 11, 2015July 11, 2015 by Sarah Hooper

“Relief from pain and suffering is a human right.” –WHO 1990

The words above were printed out and taped onto a wall in the pediatric oncology ward at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital.

The day I read it, we had just left a meeting attended by QECH doctors, where they had convened to discuss the preceding week’s maternal mortality cases. Each case was thoroughly explained, from when the patient was admitted, the condition of the patient throughout her stay, the birth proceedings, and the time/cause of death. Case after case, we listened as doctors explained what resources—medicines, machines, tools, blood, extra nurses, an open operating theatre—may have saved the patients’ lives.

In pediatric oncology, where the poster was, we were looking at the only electronic body scale in the pediatric oncology unit. Karen and Tanya had been asked by the nurses to come by, as the machine wasn’t charging correctly. We found the machine hooked up to the incorrect power plug—the jack and the plug were two different shapes—despite the fact that the nurses said they had been using that particular plug with the scale for a long time. The scale was many years old; most likely, the correct cord had been lost or broken months ago, and the nurses had improvised a solution in the interim. Unfortunately, their solution wasn’t going to last, and the scale was probably going to soon cease functioning.

After we left the ward, I spent time shadowing doctors, where I noticed example after example of “making do” when resource limitations didn’t allow for ideal care. For instance, I listened as doctors discussed the problem of newborn hypothermia immediately after birth. When the mother experiences health complications and the baby cannot be rested on her chest, the baby often grows dangerously cold without the skin-to-skin contact. Limited resources prevent the use of expensive incubators or warming blankets, so the alternative solution decided upon was the use of plastic shopping bags, which would be wrapped around the child for insulation. Though not ideal, the solution was the most current funds would allow. While in pediatrics, I saw a baby who was being treated for jaundice with phototherapy. Typically, a thick headband is used to shield the baby’s eyes from the intense light. Unfortunately, none were available. Instead, an adult sized mouth and nose mask had been carefully fastened around the baby’s eyes, attempting to substitute for the more appropriate eye mask.

Seeing the poster, “relief from pain and suffering is a human right,” between hearing the maternal mortality cases, seeing vital machines disappear from use, and shadowing in the wards, hit me hard, as most of the problems stemmed only from the lack of available resources. Patients fill every ward in the hospital—labor, burn, oncology, special needs pediatric, neonatal—their eyes glancing up as you walk by; family members wait nearby, walking through the hallways with bundles of food for loved ones tucked under their arms or bending over buckets of soapy water outside tending to the patient’s laundry. Busy, hardworking doctors meet with patient after patient; bustling nurses bounce between filled cots; medical students cluster around every morning during rounds.

Despite all of this effort and thought, patient care continues to suffer due to lack of resources—no amount of good will, hard work, or long shifts can take the place of needed materials. Syringes run out, life-saving medicine isn’t obtainable, tools break, and diagnostic equipment is too expensive: low resource takes on a new meaning when you observe it firsthand. Despite the right all humans have to be relieved of their physical pain, such relief often requires funds to procure, and money and access is extremely limited here. This depressing and unfair fact is a reality faced by so many we interact with every day. Doctors don’t have the medicine they need to properly treat patients; the hospital can’t buy the materials nor machines it needs to improve survival rates; the repair department can’t fix machines because they can’t buy replacement parts; engineers can’t build the devices they have created in their minds because there is no money to fund their project; patients from rural areas can’t receive treatment because they can’t afford or don’t have access to transportation.

The problem is massive, overwhelming, complex, and working against it is at times discouraging. The actions needed to move forwards, to encourage growth and progress, often feel equally massive, overwhelming, and complex.

However being here, I’ve begun to notice how this beast of a problem is oftentimes not diminished by large actions on the part of powerful governments and corporations. Large-scale action exists too, of course, and often does a lot of good (while other times doing a lot bad). As an individual, though, it’s difficult to relate to the changes that huge donations, programs, or interventions effect to combat the absence of resources. Instead, by looking at the small ways that the patients’ lives are improved by the relatively small innovations of a few, I begin to see how progress can be made. Granted, progress is slow, often difficult, and is made in small steps, but it is through these small feasible actions that I see ways we can help to solve a problem that otherwise seems too huge—even impossible—to tackle.

Intersections

Posted on July 10, 2015 by ac36

This past weekend marked both American and Malawian Independence Day (1), making it one for the books! As the weekend approached, I was reminded of a conversation that we had with our taxi driver, Alex, the first weekend after we arrived. We inquired about what Malawians typically did to celebrate their independence from Britain, and our question was greeted with a knowing chuckle.

That, Alex told us, was a long story.

Apparently, under the previous administration, Malawian independence was a capital B capital D Big Deal. The government would sponsor a massive party and would pull out all the stops: live music, football matches, traditional dancing, free meat and snacks, unlimited beer, and much more. They would hold this party in a different city each year, and would provide transportation (i.e. train passes and bus fare), so that even the poor could come take part in the festivities.

But a few years after the HIV/AIDS epidemic came to establish a firm foothold in Malawi (2), the government was forced to face the facts. Their celebration was permitting the spread of the virus. The provision of free transportation facilitated the unfettered movement of HIV + individuals, and the gathering tended to feed the fires of prostitution in the city where the party was taking place. As a result, HIV epidemics would pop up in villages across the country after each year’s celebration.

Alex’s story got me thinking about the intersections between bioscience and culture, especially where HIV/AIDS is concerned. That in particular is a kind of touchy point, since preventing transmission often involves talking about sex, everyone’s favorite topic for discussion in the public sphere (3). Our experiences in the ART (4) clinic have shown us that St. Gabriel’s does a reasonably good job of reducing social barriers to receiving treatment for HIV, providing services free of charge to anyone who is seropositive or is referred from another clinic. I was particularly impressed with the way that they handled discussions about transmission. Patients became aware about the importance of using contraceptives during pre-clinic education sessions, and then were asked by the ART nurse about their habits. The Malawian government has also done a surprisingly good job of avoiding the politics of blame with their Plan B+ program. In this program, all pregnant women who are found to be HIV+ are placed on ART, regardless of their CD4 count or how they contracted the infection (5). Such initiatives are exciting, as they seem to prioritize the wellbeing of the vulnerable above any sort of judgment call, either on HIV or methods of its transmission. Moreover, St. Gabe’s ART clinic is so incredibly well run (hands down the best use of technology in the entire hospital, not to mention the only comprehensive use of Electronic Medical Records) that it makes me hopeful for the future of HIV treatment and prevention in St. Gabriel’s catchment area.

St. Gabriel's Family-Centered Care Unit on one of its ever-busy ART clinic days. — St. Gabriel’s Family-Centered Care Unit on one of its ever-busy ART clinic days.

The touch screen system in the ART clinic makes it a uniquely efficient section of the hospital- honestly, it's more advanced than loads of things I've seen state side! — The touch screen system in the ART clinic makes it a uniquely efficient section of the hospital- honestly, it’s more advanced than loads of things I’ve seen state side!

As optimistic as I am about this particular hospital, a book that I’ve been reading recently keeps reminding me that the story of HIV/AIDS in Malawi is infinitely more complex that I could hope to imagine. In his essay “Politics, Culture, and Medicine: An Unholy Trinity? Historical Continuities and Ruptures in the HIV/AIDS Story in Malawi”, John Lloyd Lwanda unpacks the relationships between Western medicine, tribal tradition, and public policy in Malawi (6). His thesis is that upon the arrival of colonial powers in Malawi, traditional practices and healing were not eclipsed European ideals. Instead, Malawian culture has persisted in a ‘duality’ where political and broad social thought tend to reflect the influences of the British Empire, but village and family life allows for the transmission of tradition and resistance to colonial homogeneity. Merits of either perspective aside, this ‘duality’ holds significant implications for the transmission of HIV in Malawi. As Malawi came to be viewed as a very puritanical society with ‘traditional’ family values, traditions involving the ceremonial deflowering of young women or the prescription of intercourse with a virgin to cure AIDS continued to be practiced in rural areas especially. Essentially, what Lwanda is suggesting is that risk behaviors in Malawi aren’t absent by any means; instead, they’ve gone ‘under the radar’, found mainly in enclaves of tradition that are perpetuated by the village or family. In the face of this reality of dualism, a fight against HIV transmission will require locally and nationally sponsored efforts to redefine ‘tradition’ in a way that prioritizes the safety of all involved in various practices. Although my experiences with traditional medicine and culture have mainly been limited to a few hushed stories on the ward or with Malawian friends, this intersection indicates that HIV transmission may be more firmly embedded in Malawi than I would hope to admit. Within this context, St. Gabe’s efforts at HIV management are even more impressive than what their clinic conveys.

Another type of intersection- all the BTB Malawi interns together in one place!!!

Talking about a more fun type of intersection, this past weekend we traveled to Lake Malawi to meet up with the Blantyre interns. It was a fantastic opportunity to swap stories, compare experiences, and meet some fantastic new friends! If you haven’t done so yet, please take a look at the Malawian Polytechnic interns’ blogs (7): they’re some pretty great people, and the collaboration between Rice and Poly students is truly admirable in its benefits to both sides.

PS: Sorry for the delay in posting! I feel like it’s been a while, but that could be interpreted as a good thing, right? In my case, it means we’ve been busy, both at work and with efforts to absorb Malawian culture like a sponge. I’m happy for the chances to share our experiences with you all, even if they show up a few days later than planned!

(1). July 4^th and 6^th, respectively. Both were from Britain, actually. Malawians find it surprising and hilarious that the US was originally a British colony as well. Read more about Malawian independence HERE: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13881367 . And http://www.english.rfi.fr/africa/20140706-malawis-50-years-independence-maturing-democracy-not-enough-says-analyst.

(2). http://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/HF34/HF34.pdf

(3). Please note the strong sarcasm here. Please.

(4). Antiretroviral Therapy

(5). http://www.nyasatimes.com/2013/07/13/malawi-reduces-hivaids-prevalence-rate-to-10-percent/

(6). All this from a super interesting book entitled “HIV/AIDS in Africa: Beyond Epidemiology”. I understand that it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but definitely a unique take on what’s typically a very cerebral topic.

(7). Here are their blogs:

https://malawi.blogs.rice.edu/author/fmasi/

https://malawi.blogs.rice.edu/author/andalama/

https://malawi.blogs.rice.edu/author/csamuel/

https://malawi.blogs.rice.edu/author/cnyaluwe/

Disconnect: Lessons Learned About Foreign Intervention and Design

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Sarah Hooper

Many of the machines and materials used in the hospital are donations. This “free” equipment comes from various governments, NGOs, corporations, non-profits, or philanthropists, and oftentimes stickers or plaques attached to the machines themselves display the name of their donor. Walking through the halls of Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, the sheer number of expatriate doctors is also surprising—many European medical students end up on rotations in Queens for a month or two as part of their training. The visible presence of donated material extends outside of the hospital walls as well. While walking the streets of Blantyre, I’ve seen University of Michigan shirts, shirts bought from local New York bakeries, South Padre island tourist shirts, and various other American clothing items. Considering that many Malawians have never left the country—and that plane tickets, food, and lodging in the US are quite expensive—much of this clothing comes from donated sources. Even the Polytechnic itself was founded with the aid of the US government back in the ‘60s.

On one hand, it’s easy to appreciate the goodwill that fueled many of these actions. It’s also easy to appreciate the positive results that the donated equipment and aid often produces—they doubtlessly save many lives daily at Queens alone.

On the other hand, it’s also easy to see the frequent disconnect between donor and recipient—the gap between intended benefit and actual need—which often results in donation and aid producing far more negative outcomes. Outside of the hospital, mounds of unusable donated equipment sits forgotten in dimly lit corners. Hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of equipment is wasted when donations are given without replacement parts, without a plentiful stock of consumables, without user manuals, or without a need. Sometimes, lack of understanding between people, cultures, and institutions results in an incredibly sad waste of resources in a place where proper resources are direly needed. For expatriate doctors, there are ample misunderstandings and frequently an inability to transfer practices that impede proper treatment; it can be difficult to use methods learned in high-resource settings to heal patients in low resource settings effectively, in a way the patient is comfortable with, and in a way the hospital can support.

Even donations as seemingly harmless as T-shirts can cause damage. Free clothing puts local tailors and textile manufacturers out of work; free shoes harms local providers of rubber and textile, and the businesses of craftsmen. Money flow decreases, local markets can be harmed, and a dependence forms. In the event of donor fatigue, recipients are often left worse off than before donors intervened.

These negative consequences have their foundation partly in a misunderstanding between people, countries, and cultures. Considering that groups born and raised in one environment are donating or providing aid to a vastly different environment, the resulting disconnect that causes so many problems isn’t all that surprising.

So, as someone who was born and raised in the US, but is currently working in Malawi and designing medical technologies for low-resource settings, I’ve thought a lot about which models of work I feel are the most sustainable, do the greatest good, and cause the least amount of unforeseen harm.

Arguably the most crucial step in sustainable work is research: the truer of an understanding we (as foreigners) can get of the context for which we are designing, the more fruitful our work will be. This research phase involves identifying needs, and defining design constraints. Without proper research and understanding, we are effectively attempting to take our model of American medical care and implant it into low-resource settings. This would waste machines, money, time, and many other resources. Instead, it’s crucial to get a firm understanding of the existing framework. This involves conversing with the doctors, nurses, and patients in Malawi to identify present needs that exist within their hospitals and have been deemed important by the actual consumer. Additionally, observing the practices and processes within low-resource hospitals and health centers helps to develop an understanding of what attributes successful technologies must possess. For example, traits such as durability and ease of use take on a much fuller meaning after spending time in the wards and seeing how technologies are handled, stored, and how much time is taken to understand them. Visiting with the engineers who fix medical machines fills out our understanding of how machines are (or are not) repaired, how consumables will (or will not) be supplied, and what materials are (or are not) available to work with. Designing medical technologies requires particularly extensive research, as the buyer (hospital), the user (doctor/nurse), the beneficiary (patient), and the repairman of each device is a different party; an understanding of each is needed to properly understand design constraints and thus design an appropriate technology.

Apart from understanding the need, the setting, and the people, the market also needs to be considered. How will the product be marketed? Who is going to buy the product? How much will they buy it for? Why will they buy it? Who will manufacture it? How will manufacturing be sustained? Is there a large enough market to support the development costs? For how long will the market exist? These questions, and dozens more, have to be taken into account. Donations will run out, and often do little to support local economic growth; on the sustainability scale, donations rank pretty low. Alternatively, a thorough understanding of the technology’s market makes the product potentially sustainable.

Once the need has been identified, the constraints defined, and the market considered—and after all are well understood—a device is ready to be built. While these devices often have their high-resource counterparts (expensive machines that address the same health problem in high resource settings) designing a new technology is more complex than just removing the bells and whistles from these more costly machines. Instead, the design process often starts over. Too much changes with the different settings, and the required attributes of the two devices are too varied to simply adapt an existing tech to a new environment; an altogether new device needs to be created.

Which brings us to the designers, the engineers. The four Malawian interns will always have a deeper understanding of this country than any of the Rice interns will ever hope to have. As a result, their potential to design appropriate technologies for Malawi is great. As Rice interns, we bring other strengths to the table, and our backgrounds provide us with a perspective that is also important to the process. However the partnership between groups shouldn’t end with the research phase of the design process. If patients, hospitals, doctors, and nurses from low-resource settings are involved in understanding the problem, so should be local engineers in solving it.

Luckily, we are involved in a program currently that addresses most of these concerns. Rice’s relationship with Queens is unique, and we consistently get valuable feedback from those in the wards. Interns are here every summer, and multiple faculty members work here year round. There are Malawians employed to help run the bCPAP trainings and the clinical trials. Additionally, the relationship with the Poly and Poly engineers is growing, providing even more opportunity for sustainable, appropriate, and constructive work.

The start of something new

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Emily

This fall, the Polytechnic is starting a new biomedical engineering (BME) program. It will be the third university in Africa to offer BME, and the first in Malawi. The Poly will offer two different paths- one is a three-year technical program that provides training relevant to technicians, and the other is a five-year degree program that graduates higher-skilled engineers. The two programs are comparable to education for electricians versus electrical engineers, or auto mechanics versus mechanical engineers. The five-year program is similar to Rice’s bioengineering program, although it is more specifically focused on device design as opposed to cellular or tissue engineering, and it is affiliated closely with the electrical engineering department.

As a bioengineer, it is very exciting for me to be at the Poly during the final preparation for the new program. It is a chance for me to observe how a engineering degree program is structured, and also to get to play a role in BME’s first introduction. One of the biggest ways that Sarah, Catherine and I are contributing is with the orientation week for new BME students. Because it is a new program, we have a lot of flexibility in our planning and a valuable opportunity to bring some great qualities of Rice’s O-Week and their bioe program to the Poly.

The orientation week we are planning is designed for the forty or so new students to the Poly that have been accepted into the BME program. The students will be coming from secondary schools all over Malawi, so they will bring with them a range of experience with medicine and engineering. Some of the students may have finished a program in a technical college, and are now seeking a five-year degree that would offer more opportunity. In our plans we are trying to offer the fundamentals of BME and engineering design, so that even the students with little previous engineering experience are prepared for the next five years at the Poly.

With four weeks left before our orientation week takes place, Sarah, Catherine and I have started thinking of lectures and lesson plans for activities that we hope to offer the students. We have been trying to align the entire agenda with three goals; to introduce students to the Polytechnic, to show them what skills are necessary to be a biomedical engineer, and to give them an understanding of what the career of a biomedical engineer can look like. We are collaborating with wards at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital and Physical Assets Management (PAM) at the hospital, who oversees the repair of medical devices used in the hospital. Hopefully with these connections we can expose the incoming students to real-world BME, so that they can have a more tangible context to the work they will be doing at the University. We are also planning a week-long team design project, so that the students will be exposed to the design process and also get experience in collaboration and working on a team. Both of these skills are absolutely necessary in any type of engineering, and we hope that by providing an early exposure to both we can help the students use these skills in their future coursework.

With no precedent to the program or to the orientation week, it is difficult to predict what exactly our activities will look like or how they will play out. Nonetheless, our combined experience of bioe, global health, and general engineering design classes are a huge asset and a resource that I’m sure will be put to use as we draw closer to the event. I look forward to facilitating the orientation, and getting to see the BME program unfold in real time.

Little Epiphanies

Posted on July 8, 2015July 8, 2015 by Catherine Dunaway

This internship has been full of little daily epiphanies. Sometimes they’ll hit me on our morning walks, during our long talks at dinner or when we come up against a challenge at work. I had an epiphany recently when we were brainstorming ideas for some kind of casing or way for our suction pump shut off device to interface with the actual suction pump machine. Charles and I were sketching out and talking about different ideas. Mine were usually rough geometric depictions of a device from indeterminate materials, while Charles’ included very specific materials and methods of assembly. His first question after I described one of my ideas to him was usually, “But what would it be made out of?”

It hit me that in the US, I was taught to brainstorm and approach projects with the unarticulated but nonetheless present assumption that available resources were not an issue. I think the idea is to promote unbridled creativity and to leave the realities of procurement, assembly and cost for a later stage in the design process, (but with the knowledge that barring prohibitively expensive components almost any tool or material is often just an Amazon order away.) Here, the feasibility of the idea from a procurement/cost/assembly of materials perspective is an ever-present consideration, and often the first determinant used in whether or not to pursue an idea.

At first I was very frustrated by this reality in relation to the design process. It seemed that by necessity, a resource-blind phase of the design process where innovative ideas are born in the US was being skipped over entirely in Malawi. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the scarcity of resources wasn’t something to be ignored; it was something to be embraced. If we fully accept and understand the resources at hand, then they become just another set of design criteria. And well-quantified design criteria don’t hinder design, they foster better, more relevant, more effective design.

To clarify, “locally sourced materials” and “sustainable practices” are buzz words I’ve heard a lot at Rice when talking about global health products. I guess I’d always just looked at them as things that were barriers to good designs rather than as gateways to better designs. It was a little epiphany, to be sure, and one that seems blatantly obvious to me now, but since I started thinking about resources as a design criteria, it has transformed the way I look at engineering in Malawi. Now I see that it’s only through fully embracing challenges rather than ignoring them that we are lead to sustainable and meaningful solutions.

The Race Continues…

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Christina Samuel

We have been trying to come up with the best and convenient design for the suction pump add-on. We came up with the idea that we should come up with a circuit that will contain sensors that will transmit and receive light thereby sensing the level of fluid in the bottle.

The recommended sensors are the Ultrasonic sensor and Infrared sensor. The ultrasonic sensor is used to measure distance by transmitting sound waves and then reading the reflected wave from any surface. The infrared Sensor has a transmitter on one side and a receiver on the other end. The receiver gets light from the infrared LED.

The circuit that we are still working on

We brainstormed about the good housing which is going to be efficient as well as not bulky. We came up with three designs: belt design, stand design and plastic-cover hole design.

I. Belt design
• The belt design would have a transmitting sensor on one end and a receiving sensor on the other end.
• The belt would wrap the bottles that contain the fluids. It is required that the sensors should be aligned so that the receiver should receive the light and reflect it (light travels in a straight line).

II. Stand design
• We came up with the stand design idea after considering that the bottles need to be cleaned. The stand would be movable so the sensors will not be affected when cleaning the jars.
III. Bottle-cover hole design
• This design will have a sensor in it which will be put in a hole which will be cut on each bottle.
• The sensor will then sense the level of fluid.
• This is the simplest design but it is not practical because we asked the Biomedical Engineer at Physical Assets Management at QECH who did not recommend the idea.
When we came up with all the designs, I and Emily went to Chatinkha Nursery as well as Chatinkha Operating Theatre to ask the nurses and doctors of their preferred designs. We met one of the nurses who recommended that it is better that we implement the Belt design since it is simple to use as well as not requiring a lot of space. She said that the stand design is also a good one but because of space, it will not be efficient therefore the nurses will be reluctant to use it.

Groups rock! (Suction pump control system)

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Ndalama Andrew

Hello there, in the past week, we divided ourselves into groups so that we cover a lot of stuff. We managed to do many activities compared to the past weeks. (Groups are the best!)

The first group was working on the suction pump control system circuit designs. The designs that we came up with were:

On top Infrared sensor

The infrared transmitter and the receiver will be positioned on top of the suction bottle (tank), and the infrared (ir) signal will refract on the surface of the liquid and will be sensed by the receiver. The level of the liquid in the bottle will be measured by the time the infrared signal will take to reach the receiver.

Side infrared sensor

The transmitter and the receiver will be positioned and aligned on opposite sides of the bottle. When the bottle is empty or the liquid has not reached the level where the sensors are, the ir signal will be sensed by the receiver, however when the ir signal is blocked or it is bent, i.e. the ir signal does not reach the receiver, the control system will shut down the motor.

The other group was working on the mechanical designs of the control system. The designs that were proposed were:

Stand design

A mechanical stand to hold the sensors in position

Belt design

A belt that will hold the sensors and that will be wrapped around the suction pump bottle.

Another group went to Queen Elizabeth central hospital to talk to the nurses about our designs of the suction pump control system. The nurse preferred the belt design because it takes less space than the stand design and it is easy to use.

suction pump-opttimisation of the suction pump to be built

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Charles Nyalugwe

Hello,

In this blog, I would like to express the progress so far on the control system of suction pump which we are building.

On this fifth week of our internship, we are still trying to build the control system circuit of a suction pump which will control the overflow of the fluids into the machine. Two ways of doing it has been proposed, like the use of infrared optical sensors and level sensors. As of now we are building two circuits, one for infrared optical sensor and the other for level sensor. The purpose of doing it is to choose the one with high performance.

One of the trial circuits for the infrared sensor

On other part of this project, we are in the process of brainstorming the designs where we can put our sensors on the suction pump. We have not chosen one yet because it will depend on the type sensors to be used. On Tuesday, I and Christina went to PAM (Physical Asset Management at Queen Elisabeth central hospital) to see if our designs will work on existing suction pumps.

Cape maclear

It was a wonderful weekend well spent at the cape maclear. Cape maclear is one of the beautiful beaches of lake Malawi.

Bye…

The Solution: Suction Pump Add On

Posted on July 8, 2015 by fmasi

This week we spent most of our time working on the suction pump and trying to brainstorm ideas on a perfect housing for it. Sometimes when the nurses are pumping the fluids from the patient they forget to monitor the bottles as a result, the fluid can overflow and then damage the pump. This is a major problem nurses are having with the current suction pump. Besides, they are the most widely used devices, hence there is need for a control system to monitor fluid overflow. So far we have come up with two ideas:

1. Using Infrared sensor: So we will have a transmitter on one side of the bottle and fix a receiver on the other end. So with no fluid in the bottle, the receiver gets light from the infrared LED. But with fluid reaching the set level of the sensors the light will be blocked thereby activating a buzzer. Simply that’s how the circuit is expected to work.

2. Using Ultrasonic sensor: Ultrasonic sensor can be used to measure distance by transmitting sound waves and then reading the reflected wave from any surface .The distance varies with the level of the blocking object. So our assumption is that with the fluid rising from the bottle during pumping process. The distance will be varying too. With some programming we can set a point to which a buzzer can sound.

We have done a number of trial circuits, and we still are right now. The good news is that the infrared sensor design looks promising and efficient as compared to the ultrasonic sensor. This is so because with the ultrasonic sensor there is need for new bottle covers which have a hole so that we can fix the sensor and that’s not very practical.

One of the trial circuits for the infrared sensor

Reports from Malawi | Summer interns

Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies

Month: July 2015