Gallery: 7 Brilliant Designs That Save Lives
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The Passive Vaccine Storage Device from Global Good stays cold for more than a month (top view).  Christian Weber Let's take a minute to praise drip tape. You can find it at your local gardening center—thin, perforated plastic strips that deliver water directly to a plant's roots. Drip tape is one of the biggest advancements in farming of the past 80 years, radically reducing the water industrial farmers need and enabling our food supply to skyrocket. We take it for granted because, like many great designs, it is so simple and commonplace. But it depends on a pressurized water supply. Millions of farmers in the developing world, where drip irrigation is impossible, must carry water cans on their backs—painful, scarring labor. But in 2009 a small design startup, Proximity, launched a gravity-fed drip system. It's not much more than a huge PVC-canvas bag raised a few feet off the ground. The design hinges on a novel water filter that cleans out dirt and grit without sapping water pressure. Proximity's system cuts water usage in half, increases yields by a third, and costs just $65. The device enables a single woman to tend a larger plot by herself. Her children can thus go to school instead of farming. Thousands of farmers in Myanmar have bought them. Contrast the success of the Proximity system with the disastrous PlayPump, a merry-go-round that pumped water while children played on it. By 2008, Roundabout Outdoor, a company with backing from the US government, had installed more than 1,000 of these $14,000 devices across Africa, often at the expense of existing wells. Unfortunately, the math suggested that kids would have to play 27 hours a day for the PlayPump to provide enough water for those it served. Today most of them lie fallow, rusting monuments to good intentions married with half-baked design. Over the past few years, design has become a crucial tool in helping the developing world. And that makes sense. After all, designers aren't just obsessed with fashion and form—they are trained to articulate people's needs and desires and to build devices we will actually use. In the US, that can mean creating products that solve even the tiniest daily inconvenience, rely on our abundant infrastructure, and appeal to our relative wealth. But those conditions don't apply to the world's poorest. So if you're going to help the developing world, you can't just airlift in supplies we use in the rich world. You need to deeply understand how the people there live, then design things that make sense for their specific conditions. This trend has its roots in the early 2000s, when business writer C. K. Prahalad challenged the then-dominant view of the world's poorest people as charity cases who would gratefully use anything they were given. Instead, Prahalad saw the developing world as an unaddressed consumer market filled with individuals making tough choices to satisfy their needs. A mother in India facing a trade-off between medicine and cell phone minutes is every bit a consumer—but her dilemmas are profound, and thus the products aimed at her need to prove their worth unambiguously. We can still be naive about the many challenges involved in making a product succeed in the developing world. But designers in recent years have become more exacting about the delivery and sustainability of devices and services. What follows are some of the most inspiring projects in development, including a light for treating infant jaundice that offers treatment at 10 percent of Western costs, a thermos that can deliver vaccines to the most remote places in the world, and a cholera ward that stops infection from spreading simply by treating its own water. These are the kinds of innovations that can help people today—and will lead to even better-designed solutions tomorrow.
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Passive Vaccine Storage Device: removable vaccine trays minimize cold loss.  Christian Weber A Cooler Cooler Global Good's Passive Vaccine Storage Device By Liz Stinson Unrefrigerated vaccines spoil—a problem in remote regions where electricity is spotty. Global Good's answer: Use a super-efficient cooler that requires just two bags' worth of ice to stay cold for up to 50 days. How It Works:     Lamosca A Constant Log Spoiled vaccines don't necessarily look spoiled, which is why vaccine refrigerators in the West often log their temperature history. This one keeps track of how often the lid is opened and records temperature and GPS data, which can be downloaded via USB or relayed via SMS. Insulating Layers Eight plastic ice-filled containers stack inside the body. These sit inside an aircraft-grade aluminum bottle wrapped in sheets of the same foil-like insulation that shields satellites from extreme temperatures by reflecting heat. A vacuum seal also helps keep the inner chamber cold. Efficient Retrieval Inside are vials for 300 inoculations loaded onto 12-inch trays that come in interchangeable sizes to suit different vaccine configurations. They're reachable through a 5-inch opening: 95 percent of hands can fit through it, but it's still small enough to limit warm air from flowing in quickly.
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The Mazzi milk jug for dairy farmers reduces spillage and spoilage.  Christian Weber farmer's helper Global Good's Mazzi Milk Jug By Liz Stinson In the West, dairy farmers are the first link in a hyper-efficient processing chain. In Kenya, they do everything themselves, from milking to carrying their wares to market. As a result, up to 5 percent of the milk produced each year is lost to either spillage or spoilage—a major economic drain. The biggest culprit is the jerrican most farmers use to carry milk. So Global Good created the Mazzi, a container just big enough to carry a day's output from the typical three-cow farm, about 2.5 gallons. It will hit the market next year in eight African countries. How It Works:   Lamosca A detachable funnel allows farmers to milk directly into the jug so there are no transfers. And the ends of the Mazzi handle (on the back side) are pinched off, eliminating hollows that can shelter bacteria. The 7-inch mouth lets users reach inside to scrub every inch.
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The Brilliance phototherapy lamp for treating jaundice uses long-lasting LEDs instead of compact fluorescent bulbs.  Christian Weber light saver D-Rev's Brilliance Jaundice Lamp By Kyle VanHemert Jaundice kills hundreds of thousands of babies in India and the developing world, which is particularly heartbreaking since it can be cured easily in a couple of days with a simple blue light. But phototherapy devices don't last in settings where replacement bulbs and parts are in short supply. Working phototherapy units are rare as a result, so nonprofit product outfit D-Rev developed Brilliance, a unit that's cheap and robust. How It Works:      Lamosca Dependable Bulbs Hospitals in Nigeria and India often have phototherapy units—they're just broken. Among the biggest culprits are burned-out compact fluorescent bulbs, which can treat only 50 babies before needing to be replaced. Brilliance uses long-life LEDs, which can treat more than 1,000. Fewer LEDs In the West, LED models cost upwards of $3,000, thanks in part to their hundreds of diodes. D-Rev used computer modeling to optimize light coverage with the least number of diodes: Brilliance uses only 12 LEDs and sells for $400, yet it outperforms many state-of-the-art units. Passive Cooling Most compact fluorescent phototherapy units include fans to cool the bulbs. Brilliance relies on passive cooling—exposure to air—to keep temperatures under control, which in turn maximizes LED performance. It's cheaper, and even more important, it's one less part to break. A Familiar Look D-Rev designed Brilliance with urban hospitals in mind but found that doctors there weren't likely to trust newfangled gadgets. So the device is carefully crafted to look familiar and Western.
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The Femex air-infused female condom gives women control over their own protection.  Joe McKendry pleasurable protector Condax's Air-Infused Female Condom By Mark Yarm In the developing world, it's still often taboo for a woman to ask her partner to wear a condom, so their use remains rare. A female condom could solve that, but they've been uncomfortable, impractical, and noisy. So Mache Seibel and a team at Condax are developing a female condom with an irresistible selling point: pleasure. The Femex has a thumb pump attached to inflatable tubules that grasp the male tightly while stimulating the female's G-spot and clitoris. How It Works:   Lamosca The thumb pump and air infusion, which was partly inspired by Nike Air patents, are strikingly effective. In tests, women overwhelmingly prefer it to normal condoms. Femex can also be inserted up to six hours in advance. That's a particular draw in regions where women are less empowered and unlikely to press for protection.
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A solar-powered toilet from Caltech that recycles and sterilizes waste water.  Christian Weber waste zapper Caltech's Solar-Powered Toilet By Mark Yarm Some 2.5 billion people—more than a third of the world's population—lack clean toilet facilities. Such poor sanitation causes diarrhea, which kills 800,000 children each year. A Caltech team led by Michael Hoffmann, a professor of environmental science, is creating a new toilet to solve the problem. This design, which recently won a grant from the Gates Foundation, costs less than a nickel per person per day to run, while requiring minimal maintenance. How It Works:      Lamosca Nesting To minimize transport costs, the toilets are housed in shipping containers. In December, two units will be shipped to India for field-testing. Power The toilet has to work in areas without electricity. But to be sustainable, it also needs a water-recycling pump. The requisite juice comes from solar panels, which also power the sterilization process. To prevent theft, the assembly is cemented in place. Water Spray When toilet paper is available in Southeast Asia, it's customary to throw it in a wastebasket to prevent pipes from clogging. The wastebasket thus becomes a disease vector. These washrooms reject TP in favor of a purified-warm-water spray and blow-dryers. Electrochemical Treatment Remaining water is sterilized electrochemically and ready for another flush within four hours. By that time, it's also clean enough to be used for irrigation—creating revenue for the toilet's manager on top of per-use fees.
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An innovative cholera-treatment center, designed by MASS Design Group, under construction in Haiti.  Joe McKendry cholera killer Gheskio Treatment Center By Kyle VanHemert Haiti's massive 2010 earthquake led to the deadliest cholera epidemic in recent history. Next year Gheskio, a health care provider, and MASS Design Group will complete Port-au-Prince's first permanent facility for treating the disease. Patient care in temporary clinics isn't enough, since they can be disease vectors: Truckers hauling away contaminated sewage often dump their loads along the road, fouling the groundwater all over again. How It Works:   Lamosca To completely avoid dumping, all sewage is treated onsite: Five underground chambers filled with anaerobic bacteria digest 99 percent of pathogens. Water is then chlorinated before it flows to an adjacent garden.
