The winners Body Category: Freeplay Fetal Heart Rate Monitor Freeplay Energy, Cape Town, South Africa The Freeplay Fetal Heart Rate Monitor works off-grid, where there’s no electricity to support a delivery. The Washington Post reports that some 500 000 women die annually in childbirth, often from causes that could be prevented with basic care. Getting an aid like this into the hands of midwives in the developing world can mean the difference in life and death, both for mothers and infants. INDEX:Award recipient John Hutchinson, CTO of Freeplay Energy of Cape Town, credits medical associate Prof. John Wyatt of University College, London, as his “brother in arms” in creating the device. Hutchinson says: “A number of people came to us and said, ‘Why don’t you think of medical products because hospitals in Africa are littered with derelict Western-derived equipment. They require disposable or replaceable elements, and they’re just not right for the job.’”
Home Category: Chulha Philips Design, Eindhoven, The Netherlands The Chulha is a stove designed to limit the dangerous health conditions caused by traditions of indoor cooking in many rural areas of the developing world. The stove is being made available by Philips Design to the universe of social entrepreneurs so that they can, free of charge, produce the stove themselves, and generate local business while helping counter what the World Health Organization estimates is some 1.6 million deaths per year from conditions prompted by the toxic fumes of indoor cooking with “bio-mass” fuels.