HIV/AIDS

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend a meeting at Georgetown University, which featured TLG Capital and members of Quality Chemical Industries Limited (QCIL). QCIL is the first World Health Organization-approved pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in sub-sarahan Africa. Their goals, which include expanding accessibility of antimalarial and antirevtrovirals by guaranteeing affordability and quality drugs.

Their state-of-the-art facility looks like it could be found in any technology park in a "developed" country. I had the privilege of watching a full-length video tour of the facility at the event. Though I do not have access to that film, here is a shorter clip which is styled as a welcome video for visitors.

You can see the high level of detail paid to maintaining a highly sterile and secure facility. Be sure to check out some other photos of the facility. The products they manufacture are Duovir-N, the antiretroviral for HIV/AIDS treatment and Lumartem, the combination drug which is used to treat malaria (also know as ACT).

When the website of an "appropriate" technology takes the time to explicitly state the user requirements taken into condsideration when designing and creating the device, I become all the more interested in their product.

The team at JustMilk has done just that. Their goal is to prevent the transmission of HIV between mother and child.
"Our approach is to modify an existing nipple shield by adding a non-woven disk (cotton-wool) containing a common microbicide compound that inactivates the HIV without harming the baby.  This allows the mother to directly feed the baby rather than having to collect and heat the milk, which can result in social stigma."

I came accross the JustMilk team last year and had the pleasure of chatting with them. Since then, they have started researching the application of additional vitamins and minerals to the textile disk, which currently acts as the mechanism by which the breastmilk is filtered.

In addition to the six user requirements the JustMilk team has identified, I encourage you to read the testimonials recieved by professionals in HIV-affected regions. The information they provided to the team is enlightening, straightforward, and extremely thoughftul.

Ashoka-Lemelson fellow Douglas Racionzer tells the story of his shift from healthcare services to advocacy:

Douglas went on to tell me that the primary problem keeping Africans from speaking out isn't politics, it's culture. "The mindset is, 'The politicians are the experts. Let them be in charge.'" He said that his organization doesn't work with any politicians or party; they only engage directly with citizens.

"I don't want to build an empire," he said. "I don't care about having a scalable model. It's anti-going-to-scale; it's about creating an infection in society."

Sex::Tech is an upcoming conference dedicated to technology and sexual health, this February 26-27 in San Francisco, CA.

That's what you thought it was going to be about, right?  So the title earns it a little extra buzz—that's a great thing for something as important as sexual health.

From the Sex::Tech website:

"The Internet and mobile technologies have strengthened youth networks, provided new avenues for expression, and increased youth access to tools and information designed to improve their sexual health. Sex::Tech explores available tools and methods for reaching youth with culturally appropriate STD/HIV prevention and sex education interventions. Technology developers, accidental techies, educators, researchers, youth, public health professionals, activists are all welcome. It's time to show what you know and learn something new. Join us!"

Sounds like an excellent opportunity to learn about and share the latest developments and uses of technology in promoting sexual health, reaching audiences, educating youth and others, and making resources accessible.  Even if sexual health's not your focus, you might be able to learn about how to apply the same successful technologies and methods to your work too.

Text to Change (TTC), a non-profit organization in Africa, has been using mobile technology for health education since 2008. TTC has been running a fun, innovative and practical HIV/AIDS education program in three countries -- Uganda, Kenya and Namibia. This program not only educates participants about AIDS but also encourages infected patients to seek medical help and adhere to medication.

Process: TTC runs a six week SMS based quiz program with participants receiving 3 questions per week. The quiz participants answer via sending a free text message. The correct answer is acknowledged with additional information on the topic and the wrong one by an explanation about the correct answer. Detailed information on weekly quiz issues are also put up in a local newspaper and on the TTC website. At the end of the program, participants visit a Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) centre where they are provided with free HIV/AIDS counselling and testing. Participants answering correctly also have an opportunity to win prizes such as mobile phones and air time.



A similar SMS based model can be used effectively to educate people about other diseases and in providing information on general health related issues such as sanitation.

Photo taken from the Text to Change website.

Are you a person who leaves your computer on all the time including when you're asleep? Can't find a way to force yourself to shut down everytime you're not using your computer?

Then the World Community Grid is for you!

What exactly is the World Community Grid?

It is a large scale initiative supported by IBM, where the processing powers of idle PCs around the world are combined to process research data for not-for-profit organisations and research labs around the world. Through the use of grid computing, packets of data that require processing are sent to idle PCs under the program. This has saved labs around the world an immense amount of cost and time which would have been incurred should the labs have to process the data with their own computers! A quick example from 2003 - in less than three months scientists identified 44 potential treatments to fight the deadly smallpox disease. This process would have taken more than a year without grid computing.

What projects/initiatives are you contributing to?

Picture of generic gel (not the actual molecular condom). Photo credit: Flickr/Darwin Bell

This is a product that seems like it came from Star Trek: millions of molecules that act like a net to trap semen and prevent HIV transmition. Although this molecular condom has been in the works for a while, researchers are hopeful that it will become available in the next years to come.

The life of Marc Koska changed the day he read that HIV would spread via unsafe injections like wildfire and he decided to do something about it. That was back in '84. It seemed to him that if injections were the cause, then the spread was preventable.  Today his invention, a low-cost non-reusable syringe, is being widely used. And, more importantly, his campaign to raise public awareness about the dangers of reusing syringes have even led India to change national policy.

"The quest was to develop a syringe that could be made of the same materials... tooling and assembly equipment and used in exactly the same way as a conventional syringe – but with one minor, negligible cost modification that would make re-use impossible. The K1 was the result. And today, 17 years later, literally millions are used every week. Once only, so that every injection with a K1 syringe is sterile and safe". 

If you want to see the syringe, watch this video.