University Profiles
Our future projects: MobileDiagnosis in Remote Burmese Rural Areas along the Thai-Burma Border MobileDiagnosis has developed a method to send images for diagnoses via mobile phone. It allows to directly capture high quality images from the eye piece of an optical microscope or other optical devices with a camera-integrated mobile-phone (with no additional adaptors or devices) and to send them as MMS via mobile phone network to distant diagnostic centers for prompt diagnosis or second opinion. The mobile-phone with integrated camera functions as image transmission unit. It offers a possibility to connect basic health care facilities in remote areas with more specialized health care facilities in the field of medical image diagnostics. In previous projects, MobileDiagnosis has worked with health care workers in order to train them in the use of their product. However, in the project that YCA envisions with Burmese communities, the goal is not to train health workers, but to train local poor people for them to have a livelihood. The Yunus Center at AIT wants to develop a project with MobileDiagnosis that targets the Burmese citizens living in remote areas on the Burma side along the Thai-Burma border with no access to health care facilities. “Most of Myanmar’s population live in rural areas, while health services are concentrated in larger towns and cities. This means the health needs of most of the population of more than 50 million are unmet, especially in areas where conflict between the government and various rebel groups or inter-communal violence still occurs. […] Violence has warped malaria control along the country’s border with Thailand, and frustrated attempts to keep mothers and their newborns alive in eastern Myanmar, where the maternal mortality ratio is more than triple the national average of 240 per 100,000 live births. […] MSF has estimated that only one-third of the estimated 120,000 people living with HIV in Myanmar, who should receive antiretroviral treatment in terms of WHO standards, are being treated, and said the shortage of medicine extends to other serious illnesses, including tuberculosis (TB).”
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The idea is to work with both the MTC, the SMRU and MobileDiagnosis in order to give these communities access to diagnoses of, among others, malaria, tuberculosis and HIV. The Yunus Center at AIT would locate, together with the MTC and SMRU, remote Burmese villages with total lack to health services. Groups of people would be selected with a gender component, the poorest or more vulnerable from the communities, to help them create a social business with Bellina´s method to diagnose illnesses, send the image to the Mae Tao Clinic and the SMRU and get the results and the adequate treatment. People from the village would approach those in possession of the mobile phone and pay them to be diagnosed. Months after they start their business, research will be conducted (by students of the master’s program at AIT, Gender and Development Studies, for example) to assess the economic, social and gender impact on the community. Goals This project will meet social business aims by addressing at the same time poverty and social problems associated with it (in this case, the lack of health services) through the creation of a social business with Livia Bellina´s technological method. It aims to provide a group of people with a livelihood and to have an impact on the community’s well being by offering them health services that they lack and by promoting gender equality. It meets the philosophy of the Yunus Center at AIT by using new technologies to try to reduce poverty and solve the social problems stemming from it through a social business initiative from a gender approach.