This 17-Yr-Old Girl’s DIY Science Project Can Be The Ultimate Lifesaver. GENIUS!

Kidney problems are common and the number of people suffering from kidney cancer and kidney disease is increasing. Those with kidney disease develop life-threatening kidney failure, requiring treatment with dialysis.

Unfortunately, not everyone are capable of accessing hospital facilities especially those people in developing countries. These inevitable facts inspired the 17-year-old Anya Pogharian when she thought of making the kidney dialysis more affordable and readily accessible to those who need it after being a volunteer at Montreal General Hospital’s dialysis unit.

Her idea was soon realized when she personally designed and built an at-home dialysis machine for her senior science project. She spent 300 hours working on it, even more than the hours required of her.

Anya made her idea happen.

Kidneys help filter waste, excess fluid, and toxins from your blood. They are also important for blood cell production and bone health.

If the kidney damage is severe it can lead to high blood pressure, anaemia and bone disease.

When Kidneys fail, harmful wastes build up in the body and treatment or dialysis is required to take over its job.

A dialysis machine does what the kidneys are supposed to do: it cleans and filters the blood.

As you have noticed, dialysis requires quite a complicated machine.

Patients often need several times of dialysis treatment a week which can be performed at a hospital or at home through the hemodialysis machine. Unfortunately, the machine can cost up to $30,000.

While Anya’s invention is simpler and smaller.

Her machine costs $500 which allows patient to do the dialysis at home sparing them from travelling to and from the hospital and helps lessen the cost for the treatment.

Watch Anya’s brilliant invention:

Credits: Anya Pogharian

Quite a unique and useful DIY project and knowing that it’s for a great cause and can help save lives makes it even more awesome.

As of this writing, Anya will be given the chance to see if her dialysis machine works since Héma-Québec has offered her an internship that will allow her to test it on real blood.

Way to go kid!