These African Innovators Use Phones to Save babies From Dying at Birth

Across many parts of the world, women are still in danger of losing their lives due to pregnancy and childbirth. Figures from the World Health Organization showed that an estimated 289,000 women lost their lives in 2013 due to pregnancy and childbirth. To address these life-threatening issues, several strategies have already been launched by different collaborating organizations.

Uganda, one of the countries with high rates of infant and maternal mortality, is facing the challenge of providing access to quality healthcare to their countrymen. Having limited capability, Ugandans are tasked to develop innovative technologies that will help breach the gap between health services and its people. Luckily, Ugandan inventors Brian and Josh developed a rather ingenious way of upgrading the ancient medical equipment present in their community – by hooking it up to smartphones.

Joshua Okello connected the 100-year-old device used to monitor a baby’s heartbeat to a phone app that can diagnose, alert, and suggest medical action for pregnant women who consult in their health stations. As they have said, “There is a general mindset that things that are made in Africa aren’t good enough. As African innovators, we have something really big to offer the world stage. The sort of conditions that we work in are much more difficult that other innovators out there.” Not only that, two other innovators, Joshua Businge and Brian Gitta, have devised an app that can detect malaria from blood cells. The high child mortality due to malaria in the sub-Saharan region has prompted the two inventors to develop an app that can recognize malarial parasites in blood cells.

Watch the video below:

Amazing, isn’t it? These wonderful technological developments coming from Africa just goes to show the capacity of human innovation. But although they have these great ideas, roadblocks such as financing still limit their growth. We hope that in the future, we can invest more on ingenious inventions such as these. We’re looking forward to seeing more wonderful inventions from these technological trailblazers!

Source: Upworthy, Take Part Live