Science, tech & innovation for humanitarian relief

Bringing emergency relief and longer-term support to communities affected by natural disasters or conflict can be deeply complex, demanding astute, multipronged analyses of the diverse needs of different groups. In this podcast, David Constantine discusses how, when disasters occur, people with disabilities are particularly vulnerable. Disabilities can make accessing emergency care and medical support even more of a challenge – and relief agencies have often been slow to ensure their needs are integrated into emergency response programmes. Here, Constantine explains how, through a DFID and Humanitarian Innovation Fund-sponsored programme, Motivation has been designing wheelchairs for people affected by natural or manmade disasters. The design was unveiled at the AidEx event in mid-November, and the first consignment of wheelchairs has now arrived in the Philippines, to support communities affected by Typhoon Haiyan.

David Constantine on responding to the needs of disabled people during emergencies

The award-winning co-founder of a global disability charity talks about how tech and training can improve lives.

http://www.scidev.net/global/multimedia/q-a-david-constantine-on-technology-that-transforms-lives.html

Q&A: David Constantine on technology that transforms lives

In this podcast, hear how collaborative mapping and satellite technology can assist humanitarian responses.

http://www.scidev.net/global/aid/multimedia/open-source-mapping-stop-ebola.html

Using open-source mapping to help stop Ebola

Refugee enterprise in Uganda holds valuable lessons for global migration policy, says researcher Alexander Betts.

In this podcast, Alexander Betts, director of the Humanitarian Innovation Project (HIP) at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, discusses why — and how — the global community should radically rethink humanitarian responses to refugees.
 
Refugee economies, a myth-busting report published today (World Refugee Day) by HIP, says responses to refugee crises are often designed around short-term protection and assistance — an unsustainable strategy that frequently leads to “long-term misery”. [1]
 
But there are alternatives. In the interview, Betts describes how HIP’s investigations in Uganda — a country with an unusually liberal policy towards refugee employment and freedom of movement — brought researchers into contact with vibrant economic networks of refugees, often geared around technological innovation, such as maize milling businesses and radio stations. He says such networks have enabled refugees to become more self-sufficient and to contribute to the national economy, bringing benefits to both refugee and host communities.

http://www.scidev.net/global/migration/multimedia/q-a-rethinking-approaches-to-refugee-assistance.html

Q&A: Rethinking approaches to refugee assistance

In this podcast, we talk to Chris Albon, director of the global crisis data arm of Ushahidi, an open-source data mapping organisation that originated in Nairobi, Kenya. 

Albon explains how Ushahidi software can be tailored to track data in different contexts — from collating reports of violence during elections to tools for monitoring urban planning projects. He also discusses Ushahidi’s growing partnerships with large corporations such as Twitter. And he tells us about some of the potential hazards of using open data mapping in more volatile political contexts or during conflict.

http://www.scidev.net/global/data/multimedia/open-source-tools-map-crisis-data.html


Q&A: How open-source tools can help map crisis data

For World Humanitarian Day today, we speak to Bayard Roberts, director of the European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom, and a member of the school’s Centre for Global Mental Health. 

Drawing on his research in South Sudan and Uganda, Roberts explains some of the impacts of exposure to conflict on mental health and discusses the challenges to providing better mental health services, particularly for women and young people. He describes how research can help build stronger, more cost-effective and culturally appropriate mental health services, and he outlines ideas for how the international community could work more closely with researchers to provide these kinds of services to communities affected by war.  

http://www.scidev.net/global/conflict/multimedia/impact-war-mental-health.html


Q&A: The impact of war on mental health

[OXFORD]  In response to the growing Ebola crisis in West Africa, scientists in the United Kingdom and United States last week launched human trials of an Ebola vaccine candidate, and the plan is to carry out trials in Mali too within the next few weeks. 

SciDev.Net spoke to Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford and lead researcher for the UK-based trials. He told us about the exceptionally fast review process that enabled scientists to start the trials within a few weeks, the international collaboration driving the fight against this public health emergency, and his hopes that a vaccine could be available by the end of the year. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/medicine/multimedia/fast-tracking-ebola-vaccine-human-trials.html

Q&A on fast-tracking Ebola vaccine human trials

[LONDON] In this interview, we talk to Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom, and one of the team who identified the Ebola virus in 1976. He talks about what lessons the West African Ebola outbreak holds for global health planning and emergency response. And he discusses the need to radically improve local health infrastructure in the affected countries, and to bring together different sectors and ways of thinking to respond to disease outbreaks. 

The interview was recorded this week (8 October) at the Royal African Society’s meeting, ‘West African Ebola Outbreak: Gaps in governance and accountability’ at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/disease/multimedia/peter-piot-lessons-ebola-crisis.html

Q&A: Peter Piot on the lessons from the Ebola crisis

For World Development Information Day today, we speak to Carlos Chirinos, director of SOAS Radio at the University of London, United Kingdom, and visiting professor at New York University, United States, about the role of radio and music in keeping people in West Africa informed about Ebola and access to health services.

He explains why radio’s accessibility and speed of production can save lives during public health emergencies. In his view, musicians can be innovative pioneers who bridge the divide between communities and public health. For example, he talks about ‘Ebola: Invisible Enemy’, a song he’s creating with Malian musicians Amadou and Mariam. 

Chirinos believes the global and scientific community must do more to work with musicians and radio stations to ensure public health awareness work is well-informed and appropriate.

http://www.scidev.net/global/icts/multimedia/-singing-safety-rules-ebola.html

Q&A: Singing safety rules for avoiding Ebola

Jonathan Ledgard is director of Afrotech, a Swiss-based initiative that pioneers new technologies in Africa. In this podcast, he explains why the future of transport across the continent will hinge on cargo drones. From easing congestion in densely populated cities to opening up the huge rural areas poorly connected by roads, Ledgard says drones could revolutionise how cargo is delivered. Africa should position itself as a pioneer of drone technology now, he says, and Afrotech is working closely with African governments to help make flying robots an everyday reality.

http://www.scidev.net/global/transport/multimedia/drones-future-african-transport.html

Q&A: Could drones be the future of African transport?

Public health responses to the Ebola crisis neglected to build trust among affected people, and more must be done to engage with the ‘human factor’ when disease outbreaks occur, anthropologist Heidi Larson warns in this audio interview. 

Larson, director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom, says crisis response programmes must address public fears around disease. One critical lesson to emerge from the Ebola epidemic, she says, is that failing to focus on communication and trust-building with communities early on can lead to heightened fears and misinformation that jeopardises safety and helps a disease spread.

Social scientists and medical experts need to work hand-in-hand to devise responses, Larson says, because “a public health or medical expert and an anthropologist will look at the same situation and notice very different things”.

The interview was recorded at ‘Ebola – The 21st-century plague?’, a conference at the Royal Society of Medicine, United Kingdom, on 6 February. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/health/multimedia/community-trust-epidemics-ebola-audio.html


Q&A: How building community trust helps combat epidemics

In this audio feature, radio broadcasters and experts discuss why radio remains the cornerstone of how we connect.

http://www.scidev.net/global/human-rights/multimedia/radio-power-communication-human-rights-audio.html

Radio’s enduring power in changing lives

This audio feature finds out how a system was developed to assess flood risk where observational data is missing.

Researchers get flood forecasting off the ground

Rachel Aveyard is project manager for Mr Plan-Plan, a BBC Media Action drama series broadcast in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to help people understand how to protect themselves against Ebola. In this audio interview she talks to Imogen Mathers about producing Mr Plan-Plan and why drama and radio are such important vehicles for making public health information accessible and applicable to people’s everyday lives. She also outlines a few of the logistical barriers to delivering the show to hundreds of partner stations across countries where internet and transport networks are poor or non-existent. And she explains why it is that radio dramas carry a value that extends far beyond the broadcasts themselves. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/disease/spotlight/ebola-health-emergency-response.html

How radio dramas build health awareness – an interview with BBC Media Action

“Syrian refugees are not dying from pneumonia, they’re dying from diabetes and heart problems”, says Jon Gunnarsson of Médecins Sans Frontières. “Seventy-seven per cent of all mortality is due to non-communicable disease.”   Gunnarson, who works with refugees in Jordan, says that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) represent one of the most urgent yet underfunded health crises facing Syrian refugees displaced by the country’s civil war.

There are 600,000 Syrian refugees registered in Jordan, 84 per cent of them living outside refugee camps. Many are afflicted by NCDs such as hypertension, heart disease, asthma, smoking-related illnesses, and diabetes — indeed the Middle East and North Africa region has the highest prevalence of diabetes in the world, Gunnarsson says. These conditions are exacerbated by risk factors linked to the stress and trauma of displacement, as well as lack of access to treatment. For example, smoking and inactive lifestyles are widespread among those displaced, while high rates of depression can make treatment adherence more difficult for patients, he says.


So great is the problem, that MSF – an organisation that does not usually focus on NCDs – has been building NCD clinics and testing out new treatment programmes for refugees. Underpinning these is a ‘patient-centred model of care’, that includes health education, counselling, peer support sessions and motivational interviewing. 

In this interview, Gunnarsson, who heads up an NCD nurse team in Irbid province in northern Jordan, explains why NCD care is so effective and vital for Syrian refugees, and outlines some of the results from their work in Jordan. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/migration/multimedia/treating-diseases-killing-syrian-refugees.html


New ways to treat the diseases killing Syrian refugees

In 2002, after decades of war followed by Taliban oppression, Afghanistan’s university system was in tatters, says Osman Babury, the nation’s deputy minister of higher education, in this audio interview. Just 7,000 students were enrolled in university — and all of them male as the Taliban restricted female education. Thirteen years later, there are over 300,000 students in higher education, 50,000 of them women.

But the path to a fully functioning higher education system remains beset by challenges. Persistent conflict, political volatility and the threat of Taliban attacks — including on universities themselves — make providing higher education a struggle. 

Stress and mental health problems stemming from long-term exposure to war and oppressive regimes affect huge numbers of Afghan students. And as universities in Afghanistan and worldwide increasingly become targets for extremist attacks — the devastating Garissa attack in Kenya in April being the most recent high-profile example — giving students and staff training in how to deal with these threats becomes ever more vital, Babury says. 

In this interview, Babury discusses these and other challenges, and suggests ways to tackle them head-on.

The interview was recorded on 2 June at the British Council’s Going Global conference on international education, in London, United Kingdom.

http://www.scidev.net/global/education/multimedia/afghan-universities-violence-war-conflict.html

Building Afghan universities in the face of violence

Students in Gaza face near insurmountable barriers to university education, explains Suheil Tarazi, programme manager for the British Council in Gaza, in this audio interview. Persistent conflict, buildings destroyed by bombing, a lack of funding and equipment, a student body traumatised by years of violence and war, and the world’s lowest employment rate are just some of the devastating conditions students and teachers experience each day. 

July 8 marks a year since the beginning of the seven-week war that left nearly 2,200 people dead — over 2,100 of them Palestinians in Gaza. Like many Gazans, Tarazi says, a huge number of students and lecturers lost their homes and family members in the 2014 conflict, adding to those already traumatised and displaced.

Against this backdrop, Tarazi says scholarships to study abroad can be lifelines for students, with many going on to return home to help develop universities in Gaza. 

The interview was recorded on 2 June at the British Council’s Going Global 2015 conference on international education in London, United Kingdom.

http://www.scidev.net/global/education/multimedia/education-lifelines-palestinian-students-gaza.html

Photo credit: UN Photo/Shareef Sarhan

Education lifelines for Palestinian students in Gaza

When the NGO Field Ready first arrived at a health clinic in Haiti, they found the hospital’s maternity ward dangerously short of equipment. Nurses and doctors were using makeshift tools to clamp the umbilical cords of new-born babies. So the team began printing umbilical cord clamps using 3D printing presses, trained up the staff, and this kind of printing is still in use today, long after Field Ready left the island. Rather than buying expensive equipment, which is usually imported at great cost from China and elsewhere, healthworkers can now simply print off such kit as and when they need them. 

In this audio interview, Laura James, advisor to Field Ready, which specialises in 3D printing for humanitarian relief, explains that umbilical cord clamps are just one use for this important, rapidly evolving technology. They hope to develop the capacity to create spare car parts and the more straightforward but no less vital tool, buckets – both items that are in high demand but short supply in the global south, with countries too often reliant on expensive imports.  

In time, Field Ready hope to create a global network of 3D printing technicians and designers who, through online manuals and forums, can share designs and ideas across continents and contexts. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/innovation/multimedia/3d-printing-emergency-healthcare-haiti-maternity.html


3D printing can revolutionise emergency healthcare

Hear how a Swedish social enterprise is producing innovative housing to meet the needs of the displaced. 

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq, which killed more than 20 people, including UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, and injured many more. The United Nations has designated tomorrow as World Humanitarian Day, to recognise those caught up in humanitarian catastrophes and those who work to support them. 

In this audio interview, we talk to Johan Karlsson, head of business development at Better Shelter. This Swedish social enterprise designs safe and robust shelters for refugees across the world. Karlsson says such products are an important evolution in emergency shelter, bringing dignity and safety to refugees in some of the world’s most insecure places. At the centre of the project is the idea of democratic design. Technical testing, pilot and field trials, and feedback workshops bring refugees into the design process, ensuring their practical, social and cultural concerns are heard and integrated in the shelters’ design.

The shelters are now being used in Ethiopia, Iraq and Nepal. And they can be more than homes: through use as buildings such as health clinics, women’s centres, and children’s play spaces, they can meet the many needs of those displaced from their homes. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/migration/multimedia/refugee-shelter-redesigned.html


Refugee shelter redesigned

In this podcast, Kala Fleming, a water research scientist from IBM in Nairobi explains to SciDev.Net how they are using digital intelligence to manage water across the entire water supply chain in project she is spearheading.

Fleming and a team of other researchers from IBM are working with the Nairobi-based Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Langata Campus on water management. In this project, the University water tanks are equipped with digital sensors and data generated is streamed to IBM’s cloud-based data center via a mobile app.

The University is able to learn about their water supply and usage and as a result make data driven decisions and thus leveraging water management. “From a phone, the University can monitor water usage on the campus,” Fleming says.

In a bid to transform water management in Africa, IBM is teaming up with Kenyan entrepreneurs to instill digital intelligence across the entire water supply chain. “We want to ensure that data driven decisions are made,” Fleming tells SciDev.Net.


Data Driven Water Management

SciDev.Net podcasts look at key global development issues and the ways in which science can have a positive impact on equitable and sustainable development and poverty reduction. 