Malawi

    

Since 2007, Rice 360 has worked with physcians and nurses in Malawi to implement innovative health technologies that improve patient care.  Most recently, Rice 360 has worked with Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre to develop and implement technologies that improve neonatal health, including a LED-based phototherapy light for babies with neonatal jaundice and a low-cost, robust bubble Continuous Positive Airway Pressure device to provide support for babies with respiratory distress.  With support from the Saving Lives at Birth partners -- the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Norwegian government, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada and the World Bank -- Rice 360, QECH, Baylor College of Medicine, and 3rd Stone Design implemented a clinical trial of the bCPAP device.  The trial found that the bCPAP device greatly improved survival rates for premature babies with respiratory distress syndrome.Rice 360 and its partners are now rolling out the bCPAP device in all public hospitals in Malawi with support from a transition grant from the Saving Lives at Birth program.

Rice 360's student-interns have been serving in Malawi since 2007.  In addition to working with Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital to design, implement and refine a wide range of neonatal technologies for low-resource settings, students have worked with St. Gabriel's Hospital in Namitete, which has a catchment are of 250,000 people. In partnership with St. Gabriel's, students designed and implemented a backpack for Community Health Outreach workers.  Ten packs were delivered to the hospital in January 2011, where they are being used to provide care for remote communities.  With St. Gabriel's, students have also designed and implemented DataPall, an electronic medical records system for palliative care providers.  In 2007, a student-intern worked with the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative to gather feedback on a device to improve dosing accuracy for antiretroviral medication and to train healthcare workers to use bloodspot PCR to test for HIV in infants. 

Read about the students' experiences in Malawi in their blog

2007

2009

2010

2011

2012

A student intern, working with outreach nurses from St. Gabriels Hospital, uses the Community Health Outreach Pack to provide basic healthcare in remote communities in Malawi.

Interns worked with a local carpenter to build an inexpensive neonatal warming crib for St. Gabriel's Hospital.