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Press Release: Prajnopaya Teams sweep MIT IDEAS Competition May 9, 2007 For Immediate Release Cambridge, Mass.-May 9, 2007 -- Three MIT teams, working together with the Prajnopaya Foundation as their community partner, took part in the 2007 Mohammad Yunus IDEAS competition and were awarded the top three spots for their breakthrough ideas.
"IDEAS" stands for Innovation Development Enterprise Action Service. The Yunus Challenge IDEAS Award for 2006/2007 was intended for the team able to create a system that solved as many of the problems as possible causing non-adherence to TB drugs in rural, developing country contexts, and for the smallest cost possible. The Prajnopaya Foundation is an internationally active humanitarian organization that aims to increase the standard of living of the world's poor via educational, health and social welfare projects. In June 2005 the Prajnopaya Foundation launched the Tuberculosis Treatment and Prevention project (TBTP) in the state of Bihar, India, to provide diagnosis and treatment for poor communities not covered by national TB campaigns. The Foundation realizes that the current treatment of TB is often an arduous, error-prone process with inefficient methods to ensure adherence and monitoring. To that end the Foundation decided to work with the teams from MIT, providing them with vital information regarding ground realities and the nature of the problem. The teams and the Foundation had wide-ranging discussions and worked in close co-operation to come up with solutions that the Foundation believes will be practical and efficiant. This is in line with the Foundation's belief in collaboration between practical research in healthcare and its implementation to alleviate suffering and make healthcare accessible to all. Of the winning teams, one designed a cell-phone-based incentive solution called CellCentives; an other a pill-dispensation device called uBox; and the third team, Team Treatment Buddy, proposed creating peer groups of patients under treatment. The TBTP project has established a network of doctors and local volunteers who help run TB Screening Camps for diagnosis and continue with follow-up treatments. In March 2006 Prajnopaya organized such TBTP screening camps at three sites over three days. Of the 1137 patients screened during the 3-day camps, more than 50% were found to have active TB and were prescribed treatment. The Foundation intends to run its next TBTP camps at various sites covering about 15 villages in Bihar and the Himalayan region of Ladakh, from Oct 2007 to April 2008. For more information on Prajnopaya Foundation's Tuberculosis Treatment and Prevention Project, visit http://tb.prajnopaya.org/. Contact: |
