Entrepreneurs hope to save the world one baby at a time — which sounds like a fine idea:
Chen and her colleagues are finalists in the American Express Members Project contest to fund socially important programs. Their project, Embrace, is an innovative low-cost, low-tech incubator they invented that can help save premature babies in developing countries. The top five finalists will share $2.5 million, with the winner receiving $1.5 million. That would be enough for Embrace to become a self-sustaining enterprise.Embrace was the result of an innovative entrepreneurship class at Stanford University — Design for Extreme Affordability. Business school and engineering students are given a task to devise an “extremely affordable” solution to a significant societal problem. Chen’s team was challenged to create an incubator that cost less than 1% of a traditional incubator, around $20,000.
“We did research in Nepal and India,” Chen said.
They discovered that the most important issue in the survival of low-birthweight premature babies was maintaining a constant body temperature.
“We realized that the majority of deaths were in places that had no access to electricity. They needed something extremely affordable, easy enough for a mother to operate with no training, that could be used in a home or clinic setting, since most births in these areas are in (the) home.”
They came up with a device that looks like a very small sleeping bag, in which the mother inserts a pouch containing a type of wax that, when heated in boiling water for only 15 minutes, can maintain a constant 37 degree Celsius temperature for about four hours. A mother or caretaker in even the most remote village could use it properly and safely. They named it “Embrace” because it also enables a mother to hold her infant close to her body, unlike the mechanical incubators in Western hospitals.
Something so simple. So easy. So smart. That solves such an important problem. Most importantly, it would cost less than $25 — and can be used over and over again. You can learn more about Embrace at www.embraceglobal.org.
Sadly, this ignores the Malthusian conditions in “developing” countries, which haven’t grown their economies as quickly as they’ve grown their populations. Saving a premature baby, in such conditions, means adding one more mouth to feed, in a place where there may not be enough food to go around. In the short term, saving a baby is so obviously good, but, in the long term, it means more misery. At the very least, it probably means that that family cannot afford to raise the next, healthier child to come along.
Sometimes it really does look like the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.