The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has set aside a huge budget allocation of US$100,000 for 65 grants which can transform health in developing countries including India. The grants support projects in 16 countries, including India, with ideas as diverse as a TB vaccine delivered in a traditional Asian bean dish, a mobile phone tool to identify complications for community health workers caring for pregnant women and newborns, and solar powered, therapeutic blankets of light for newborns suffering from jaundice.
In five rounds of the Foundation’s Grand Challenges Explorations initiative, 405 researchers representing 34 countries have been awarded grants. These grantees were selected from more than 2,400 proposals.
The two projects are from India. The first is a new technology for contraception by Sujoy Guha of the Indian Institute of Technology in India to test a new transcervical contraceptive made from a polymer compound to incapacitate both sperm and ovum. The novel compound is delivered to the fallopian tubes in liquid form, changed to a semi-solid form with an external application of radio frequency, and can be flushed out for fast and complete reversibility.
The second is the development of Coated Copper T by Abi Santhosh Aprem of HLL Lifecare Ltd. in India. He will attempt to eliminate the side effects associated with copper T intrauterine devices by coating the copper with biodegradable polymers. The polymers could prevent bulk shedding of copper ions that cause bleeding, cramping and pain, leading to increased acceptance of this highly effective contraceptive device.
“Grand Challenges Explorations is producing innovative ways to tackle ongoing global health challenges like vaccine delivery and caring for mothers and newborns,” said Dr. Tachi Yamada, president, Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program.
“By applying mobile technology and other tools to global health, we hope to produce breakthrough solutions that could save countless lives,” he added.
Ideas that have won the grants from other countries are an innovative vaccine strategies by Michael Chan of the Ohio State Research Foundation who will develop a safe strain of the Tuberculosis bacterium and use it to ferment beans used in the traditional Asian dish natto, which could then be eaten as an oral TB vaccine.
From the Ali Salanti of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark scientists will develop and test a vaccine combining a novel placental malaria vaccine candidate with the cervical cancer vaccine, with the potential of inducing a strong protective response against both diseases.
Steven Meshnick and Carla Hand of the University of North Carolina will develop a biodegradable “synthetic lymph node” that could be placed under the skin to deliver more effective vaccines.
A low-cost cell-phone applications for global health is developed by Terry Ferrari of World Vision. It will undergo a field test in central Mozambique. Two mobile phone modules will prompt community health workers caring for pregnant women and newborns to assess, take action, and to refer care in cases of complications and emergencies.
Mark Thomas of VaxTrac in the US will field test a mobile phone-based vaccination registry using fingerprint scans to track immunization coverage.
Arye Rosen of AMT, Inc. along with neonatologist Harel Rosen, will test a low-cost, solar-powered portable blanket which provides light therapy to jaundiced infants.
Haim Breitbart of Bar-Ilan University in Israel will design and test molecules that would inactivate specific genes within sperm essential to the fertilization process to develop a reversible oral male contraceptive.
Md Abdul Quaiyum of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh will develop and test an inexpensive, biodegradable absorbent mat placed under mothers who have just delivered babies to assess immediate postpartum blood loss. The mat can be weighed at regular intervals to measure absorbed blood, providing easy and early detection of postpartum haemorrhaging.