BOP Innovation Helps Kids Breathe

Julia Tran — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 21:43:31 -0400

In high-income countries, asthma is usually a nuisance, but among the rural BOP, asthma can be a costly and deadly disease for victims who are unable to access treatment locally.

Eric Green, a medical student at Stanford University, traveled to Mexico last year as part of a group from his “Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability” class. In Mexico, he found inspiration for the invention of a very low-cost asthma inhaler spacer, an apparatus that attaches to the medicine canister and enables young children to take the medicine. He named the apparatus “Respira!,” Spanish for “Breathe!” He explains the motivation behind Respira!:

“This project began with a trip to the Higueras Health Center in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. There I met Jose Antonio, a young physician working and living in this center. He told me the story of Jesus, a child arriving with his mother in the middle of the night and gasping for breath [from an asthma attack]. Jose Antonio knew the right treatment immediately but had no way to deliver it. Although he had a refurbished nebulizer sitting in the corner of the room, it had not worked for years.

He then took me to a side room with a humidifier and explained how he desperately tried to get medication to Jesus’ lungs by pouring it into the humidifier, closing the door and hoping. It was the combination of his own feeling of frustration, the powerlessness and anxiety of the child’s mother, and the suffering and fear of the child that compelled me to address this need [for more affordable asthma treatment]” (excerpt from Respira’s Changemakers Competition entry, written by Eric Green).

Respira! is one of ten finalists in the Changemakers Disruptive Innovations in Health Competition and is in the running for a $5000 prize. Below are notes from my recent conversation with Eric.

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BOP Innovation Helps Kids Breathe