HOUSTON – Women researchers at Rice University have invented a device that can help keep more newborns alive in Africa.
Each year, an estimated 1.1 million infants die in Africa. Countries there have the highest rates of newborn deaths.
“An African newborn is more than ten times more likely to die than a newborn born in the United States,” Rebecca Richards-Kortum, one of the researchers, tells KPRC 2 Health Reporter Haley Hernandez.
Most of those deaths are preventable and this is where Richards-Kortum and fellow researcher Maria Oden come in. They head Rice University’s Newborn Essential Solutions and Technologies, also known as “Nest360” and are Co-Directors of Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies. Richards-Kortum also holds the title of Malcolm Gillis University Professor and Oden is a Teaching Professor of Bioengineering at Rice.
Better medical care can ensure the survival of 75 percent of newborns in Africa. Where others may see the harsh climate and few resources as reasons to walk away from the cause, Rice researchers accepted those conditions as a challenge. Now, along with 22 organizations, including local engineers and government officials, they are laser-focused on improving survival for small and sick newborns by 2030.
How will they do it?
Researchers are working with tools that are considered standard in any American neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), such as blood tests for jaundice. And they are also using modified inventions to detect jaundice that don’t cost as much as what you see in American NICUs.
“This device was designed to be very low cost. It’s battery-powered. It just uses a couple of LEDs, very inexpensive LEDs and an inexpensive photodiode. And, the strips just use little pieces of paper and membranes to separate out the red blood cells. So we’re able to develop a very low-cost tool to provide answers right at the bedside,” Richards-Kortum explained.
Hypothermia causes many newborn deaths in Africa and the group has designed a device that not only keeps babies warm, it also can alert nurses when someone is struggling, which is important since many nurses can get overwhelmed by the ratio of babies to nurses.
“So it’s a very simple device, but it provides a service for the nurse that makes it easier for her to do her job and to intervene if a baby is cold,” Oden explained.
Visits to Africa help keep the group’s mission on track.
The most recent trip this year was a vast change from the first time they walked through hospitals there.
“Every hospital we visited had a room called the Equipment Graveyard, and it was full of broken equipment that couldn’t withstand the harsh environmental conditions that heat, the humidity, that dust, or people couldn’t source spare parts,” Richards-Kortum said. “We’re both engineers, we’re both moms. And that trip was really transformational and wanting to partner with local clinicians, local engineers to improve that situation.”
The inspiration to improve has sparked innovative ways to use what they have when they’re on the ground in Africa, repair equipment on the spot and come up with solutions to keep babies more comfortable and make jobs easier for nurses.
“We’ve identified technologies from existing manufacturers that can also be effective in this environment. And we’ve put them all together in the package of devices that are needed to provide small and sick newborn care,” Oden said.
“And we’ve had manufacturers who’ve actually made improvements in their products that were causing them to fail in these harsh environments. And now everybody benefits because the product is better for that environment,” Richards-Kortum said.
Every year, 100,000 babies benefit across Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya and Nigeria from the Nest360 program.