Please close your eyes, and open your hands. Now imagine what you could place in your hands: an apple, maybe your wallet. Now open your eyes. What about a life?
Molim vas da zatvorite oči i ispružite dlanove. Sada zamislite što biste mogli staviti u ruke: jabuku, možda vaš novčanik. Sada otvorite oči. A što je sa životom?
What you see here is a premature baby. He looks like he's resting peacefully, but in fact he's struggling to stay alive because he can't regulate his own body temperature. This baby is so tiny he doesn't have enough fat on his body to stay warm. Sadly, 20 million babies like this are born every year around the world. Four million of these babies die annually.
Ovdje vidite prerano rođeno dijete. Ono izgleda kao da se u miru odmara, dok se u stvari bori za život jer ne može regulirati vlastitu temperaturu u tijelu. Ova beba je toliko mala da nema dovoljno sala u tijelu da ostane zagrijana. Tužno je, 20 milijuna beba poput ove rodi se svake godine, širom svijeta. Četiri milijuna tih beba godišnje umre.
But the bigger problem is that the ones who do survive grow up with severe, long-term health problems. The reason is because in the first month of a baby's life, its only job is to grow. If it's battling hypothermia, its organs can't develop normally, resulting in a range of health problems from diabetes, to heart disease, to low I.Q. Imagine: Many of these problems could be prevented if these babies were just kept warm.
Ali veći problem je što one koje prežive odrastaju uz teške, dugotrajne zdravstvene probleme. Razlog je što je bebi u prvom mjesecu njezina života, jedini posao da raste. Ako se bori protiv pothlađenosti, njezini organi se ne mogu normalno razvijati, što rezultira raznim zdravstvenim problemima. od dijabetisa preko bolesti srca, do niskog kvocjenta inteligencije. Zamislite, mnogi od tih problema bi se mogli spriječiti kada bi te bebe ostale zagrijane.
That is the primary function of an incubator. But traditional incubators require electricity and cost up to 20 thousand dollars. So, you're not going to find them in rural areas of developing countries. As a result, parents resort to local solutions like tying hot water bottles around their babies' bodies, or placing them under light bulbs like the ones you see here -- methods that are both ineffective and unsafe. I've seen this firsthand over and over again.
To je primarna funkcija ovog inkubatora. Ali tradicionalni inkubatori trebaju struju i koštaju do 20,000 US$. Tako da ih nećete pronaći u ruralnim područjima zemalja u razvoju. Kao rezultat, roditelji se oslanaju na lokalna riješenja poput vezivanje boca s toplom vodom oko bebinog tijela, ili tako da ih stavljaju ispod žarulja kao što možete vidjeti ovdje -- metode koje su i neefikasne i nesigurne. Osobno sam se u to uvjerila više puta.
On one of my first trips to India, I met this young woman, Sevitha, who had just given birth to a tiny premature baby, Rani. She took her baby to the nearest village clinic, and the doctor advised her to take Rani to a city hospital so she could be placed in an incubator. But that hospital was over four hours away, and Sevitha didn't have the means to get there, so her baby died.
Na jednom od mojih prvih putovanja u Indiju, srela sam ovu mladu ženu, Sevithu, koja je upravo prerano rodila nedonošće, Rani. Odnijela je svoju bebu u najbližu seosku kliniku, i doktor joj je savjetovao da odvede Rani u gradsku bolnicu kako bi je mogli staviti u inkubator. Ali bolnica je bila udaljena 4 sata. A Sevitha nije imala način na koji bi tamo otišla, tako da je njena beba umrla.
Inspired by this story, and dozens of other similar stories like this, my team and I realized what was needed was a local solution, something that could work without electricity, that was simple enough for a mother or a midwife to use, given that the majority of births still take place in the home. We needed something that was portable, something that could be sterilized and reused across multiple babies and something ultra-low-cost, compared to the 20,000 dollars that an incubator in the U.S. costs.
Inspirirani njezinom pričom, i desetinama sličnih priča, moj tim i ja smo shvatili da su potrebna lokalna riješenja, nešto što bi moglo raditi bez struje, nešto dovoljno jednostavno što bi majka ili babica mogli koristiti, s obzirom da se većina porođaja događa kod kuće. Trebalo nam je nešto prenosivo, nešto što bi se moglo sterilizirati i ponovno koristiti za druge bebe, i nešto što će biti jako jeftino, u usporedbi s 20,000 US$, koliko inkubator košta u SAD-u.
So, this is what we came up with. What you see here looks nothing like an incubator. It looks like a small sleeping bag for a baby. You can open it up completely. It's waterproof. There's no seams inside so you can sterilize it very easily. But the magic is in this pouch of wax. This is a phase-change material. It's a wax-like substance with a melting point of human body temperature, 37 degrees Celsius. You can melt this simply using hot water and then when it melts it's able to maintain one constant temperature for four to six hours at a time, after which you simply reheat the pouch. So, you then place it into this little pocket back here, and it creates a warm micro-environment for the baby.
Tako smo došli do ovoga. Ovo što vidite uopće ne sliči na inkubator. Izgleda kao mala vreča za spavanje za bebu. Može se potpuno otvoriti. Vodootporna je. Nema šavova iznutra tako da se može jednostavno sterilizirati. Čarolija je u ovoj vrećici voska. Ovo je materijal koji se mijenja kroz faze. To je substanca koja je slična vosku i topi se na temperaturi ljudskog tijela od 37 stupnjeva Celzijusovih. Ovo možete jednostavno otopiti koristeći toplu vodu i kada se otopi ono može održavati stalnu temperaturu slijedećih 4-6 sati, nakon čega jednostavno ponovno zagrijete vrećicu. Nakon toga je stavite u ovaj džep na poleđini, i ona stvara toplo mikro-okruženje za bebu.
Looks simple, but we've reiterated this dozens of times by going into the field to talk to doctors, moms and clinicians to ensure that this really meets the needs of the local communities. We plan to launch this product in India in 2010, and the target price point will be 25 dollars, less than 0.1 percent of the cost of a traditional incubator.
Izgleda jednostavno, ali ispitivali smo ovo desetine puta na terenu, razgovarajući s liječnicima, mamama i kliničarima, kako bismo bili sigurni da ovo rješenje zadovoljava potrebe lokalnih zajednica. Planiramo lansirati ovaj proizod u Indiji u 2010. I ciljana cijena nam je 25 US$, manje od 0.1% cijene tradicionalnog inkubatora.
Over the next five years we hope to save the lives of almost a million babies. But the longer-term social impact is a reduction in population growth. This seems counterintuitive, but turns out that as infant mortality is reduced, population sizes also decrease, because parents don't need to anticipate that their babies are going to die. We hope that the Embrace infant warmer and other simple innovations like this represent a new trend for the future of technology: simple, localized, affordable solutions that have the potential to make huge social impact.
U slijedećih 5 godina planiramo spasiti živote skoro milijun beba. Ali dugoročni društveni utjecaj jest u smanjenju rasta populacije. Ovo zvuči nelogično, ali ispostavilo se da kada se smanjuje smrtnost djece populacija se također smanjuje, jer roditelji ne očekuiu da će im beba umrijeti. Nadamo se da će grijač beba "Embrace" (Zagrljaj) i drugi jednostavni izumi popu ovoga predstavljati novi trend za buduće tehnologije: jednostavno, lokalno, pristupaćno riješenje koji ima potencijal ogromnog društvenog utjecaja.
In designing this we followed a few basic principles. We really tried to understand the end user, in this case, people like Sevitha. We tried to understand the root of the problem rather than being biased by what already exists. And then we thought of the most simple solution we could to address this problem. In doing this, I believe we can truly bring technology to the masses. And we can save millions of lives through the simple warmth of an Embrace.
Dok smo ovo dizajnirali slijedili smo nekoliko jednostavnih načela. Stvarno smo se trudili razumjeti krajnjeg korisnika, u ovom slučaju, ljude poput Sevithe. Pokušali smo razumjeti srž, uzrok problema umjesto da budemo pod utjecajem onoga što već postoji. I razmišljali smo o najjednostavnijem rješenju koje će moći riješiti problem. Radeći tako, vjerujem da zaista možemo dovesti tehnologiju masama. I možemo spasiti milijune života, kroz jednostavnu toplinu Embracea.