Social Development
Ray Avery’s Medicine Mondiale – affordable healthcare for all
Ray Avery in his garage lab
Aga and I went to see Ray Avery talk about his autobiography, Rebel with a Cause.
Ray has a mission for his life.
Use science to change the world
You can’t change the cards that you are dealt but you can change the way you play them. He sees success over a “diaspora” of difficulty. And so he set up Medicine Mondiale as an organisation to help him change the world.
We are trying to change world healthcare by getting global organisations who aren’t doing it well to improve their delivery and reduce the costs of doing so. For him, observation is the key to innovation and he learnt to observe closely because he is dyslexic and words are ‘shapes’ to his eye.
He continues
I started to look at the world to see what made things work. Few of our inventions come from linear academic research. We were investigating and watching in Kathmandu Hospitals. Incubators are ventilated and humidified with local water. This meant we were ‘cooking’ babies in a microbial broth coming from the water supply. So we patented an air filter which enabled local, unpurified water to be used.
Before this we worked on developing a cheaper inter-ocular lens for people with cataracts. This is an easy operation and truly life-changing. But each lens costs around US$300. The Fred Hollows Foundation recruited Avery to help build a factory making a new lens design in Eritrea both providing local skills, employment and around $2m profit per annum.
We collapsed the world price for inter ocular lenses from $300 to around $10.
I didn’t want to repeat the sins of other development agencies where a large percentage of programme funding never makes it to the people who need it. They get round this because ‘everything’ is categorised as programme funding including managers in the country of origin as well as visits around the globe so only around 15% of donations actually get to the project.
By an accident of birth around 90% of children have inadequate healthcare.
We think of ourselves as good global citizens. I see the world as a social anthropolgist and I think we can direct a proportion of our intelligensia to create a better world.
Think of a way you can make a difference.
What a great challenge – LifetimeHealthDiary will be thinking up ways to contribute to the disadvantaged.
Rebecca Caroe
Government Priorities in New Zealand Healthcare for the Disabled and Disadvantaged
- Every health organisation collects patient healthcare information.
- Health results to be made available to clinicians.
- By 2014 an individually owned health record by all New Zealanders.
“Health IT is hard because it is a reflection of a culture and its beliefs”.
“Where do the 5%-10% of people with different disabilities and chronic illnesses, who actually really need improved health information management systems and who are obviously among the most costly to treat, fit in this system? Will we have to wait till 2014 or beyond until something will be available? Would it be an idea to put something out there, maybe not very pretty, but something simple, test it, get feedback from the users, improve, test again, get feedback, improve etc? We can quite quickly develop something which can change not only how the data is managed but actually positively impact the lives of many people and organisations who are supporting them, leading the way to transformation of medical industry.”
A Little Background About Me
My name is Aga and together with 6 outstanding individuals I run Ignite Consultants, an organization which aims to channel resources, train leaders and build partnerships between businesses, the not-for-profit sector and academia for the growth of a sustainable society.
I am from a very entrepreneurial background, interested in how to make a sustainable difference in communities. I grew up in Poland, studied and worked in Glasgow, and have been continuing my life adventure here in Dunedin, New Zealand for the past year and a half.
While running a Social Entrepreneurship Project here in Dunedin, New Zealand, I came across Hamish MacDonald and Lifetime Health Diary Ltd. But it wasn’t until 2 months ago when he actually showed me his innovative software that with my experience of working with different disability groups and not-for-profit organisations, I saw it as a tool which could make a huge difference by enabling people to better communicate with doctors and caregivers as well as putting control back into their own hands.
The last couple of months has been an exciting journey; a huge learning curve, meetings with more than 20 organizations, discovering problems, thinking, rethinking, matching pieces of the puzzle and creating a strong vision of Healthy Community Enabled by Information
Encouraged by support from Otago University, local bodies and politicians we have decided to kick off a collaborative project which we strongly believe will create a huge impact in Dunedin’s communities and hopefully later, other communities in New Zealand and around the world.
This series of blogs will document our work, results, learnings, progress and everything else involved in bringing better health to communities! If this is a topic of interest for you, I would love to hear from you, wherever you are!
How a true passion can bring a sustainable difference
Hi Everyone,
I am thrilled to introduce you our guest blogger, a very inspiring social entrepreneur Aga Nazaruk, a director at Ignite Consultants based in Dunedin, New Zealand. Over the next few days and weeks as it progresses she will be covering a new Project: A Healthy Community Enabled by Information -a partnership between Ignite Consultants and Lifetime Health Diary Ltd and a number of community groups. You’ll be truly amazed (because I am!) what a real change a few people can make by embarking on a collaborative project and working towards a mutual goal!
I met Aga back in Spring of 2010 and was literally stunned to see how much power, energy and passion for driving social innovation into communities, training and inspiring leaders and building partnerships between businesses, the not-for-profit sector and academia for the growth of a sustainable society this petite girl possesses. She reminds me of this powerful storm coming onto the shore, sweeping off the dust and old litter, and bringing a fresh air, fresh prospective and a real change onto the ground.
Aga, welcome aboard! Looking forward to your great posts.
What is the Secret to Better Health in Developing Societies?
Last week I went to a talk in Dunedin, New Zealand by one of the doers of the world, Dr Sujit Brahmochary, M.D. Dr Sujit started as a doctor with just a table 18 years ago in one of the poorest parts of India, Bengal. His Institute for Indian Mother & Child ( http://www.iimcmissioncal.org/ ) now touches the lives of 300,000 people and is growing quickly.
Dr Sujit’s description of what he had built over 18 years, for me turned out to be an interesting description of how he learned what made a difference to developing societies through a long journey of effort and learning. Learning from mistakes, and learning from continually getting deeper and deeper into his chosen mission in life.
He was born to a poor rural Indian family, but was fortunate enough to train to be a doctor in Belgium, so he could have earned a great living in Europe, or at least in a big Indian city. But instead he chose to make a difference in one India’s poorest states, Bengal. So he became a doctor in India. (80% of people in India live rurally, and 90% of these have no access to healthcare). Dr. Sujit made the point that Primary and Preventive Healthcare can solve 80% of health problems amongst the population. So he dedicated himself to helping the health of the poorest of the poor. “Being accessible is very important to build trust in the Developing World”. He started with just a single table.
He quickly realised that he could do little without a supply of medicines and equipment, so he worked to attain support and connections to assist in this need. “If you are right, then people will join with you.”"If you do good work, people will join with you.” Organisations such as the Japanese Consulate showed up and donated an X-ray machine.
But after a longer period of time, he realised that 40% of all healthcare problems could be solved by Nutrition, or “2 Meals a Day”. ”Nobody dies from starvation. You die from malnutrition, or a low immune system, or dehydration. The key is nutrition”. Nutrition for Dr Sujit is simply 2 meals a day, with protein, some fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and water. That is enough.
But more time passed, and Dr. Sujit realised something else. Education was the key. “Be a teacher first”. To be a better doctor, he had to be a better teacher, and teach people not just how to be healthy, how to prevent sickness, how to avoid germs, how to eat, but even more important how to live, how to grow, how to be strive and grow beyond your station in life you were born into (especially in India, with a very harsh caste system for those on the bottom rung of the ladder). In fact, now Dr. Sujit’s institute no longer builds medical centers (they have 6) but instead schools (they have 26 and growing). “If you take care of educating all the children of a village, a generation later, you won’t have to do anything more. They will take care of themselves and their village.” School students don’t get sick. Those who don’t go to school, are the ones who also tend to get sick.
More time passed, and Dr. Sujit realised that education could birth more easily out of Economic Development, in particular Professor Yunus’ Grameen Bank Model of Development (giving micro-loans to mothers so they could start a business and send their children to school instead of work in the fields).
Beyond Economics, lay stable Agriculture, because that is where good nutrition and the ability to provide for a family’s basic needs come from.
And finally, after everything else, came the final step; Social and Cultural Development. What really is Development? “It is giving everybody respect, and give them an opportunity.” So now, the Institute for Indian Mother & Child has 300,000 people within its care and growth. And Dr. Sujit after 18 years of hard work, has travelled full circle and knows deeply how to effect change in developing societies.
After the lecture, I commented to Dr. Sujit about how his journey seemed to go continually deeper, from wanting to be a doctor, to being a teacher, to an economist, farmer, and finally being a builder of communities. I asked him what role remote medicine/ education and the internet could play. He replied that it is coming. Already every classroom in his schools has a computer, and in 2-3 years from now, he believes the internet is the medium to concentrate on to achieve maximum penetration for education and development in the developing world. So it seems Lifetime Health Diary timing is very good for developing world as we move forward.
Yours in Health,
Hamish
