NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Christine Nabbanja is a 22-year-old, fourth year, biomedical engineering student at Makerere University.

She is also part of a group of five innovative students, teamed up to offer global health solutions to the world. Their innovation is an automatic switch for an electrical suction pump. Suctions are used to clear the airway of blood, saliva, vomit or other secretions so that a patient can breathe during respiratory failure or surgery.

In Uganda’s health systems, the problem is immense as it represents at least 25 per cent of all failed equipment in hospitals. Although suctions can be switched off, when health workers are using them, they tend to forget and the system clogs, delaying the job at hand and threatening the life of the patient.

The team of five students came up with a solution, to add on an automatic switch to the suction pump, “so that when the bottle fills with fluids, it automatically switches off”, according to Nabbanja who was attending the second Hack-a-thon convention at Mbarara University of Science and Technology between August 22 and 24.

It was organised by the Consortium for Affordable Medical Technologies (CAMTech) Uganda and MUST in partnership with Mass General hospital’s Centre for Global Health. Other participating groups were the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard Medical School and Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) in India.