Ecuadorian Ambassador to the United States Luis Benigno Gallegos Chiriboga visited Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen in late October to see medical design projects created by Rice students as part of the Rice 360°: Institute for Global Health Technologies and its Beyond Traditional Borders initiative.
Gallegos toured the OEDK facility and met with Rice 360° faculty and staff and discussed plans to disseminate the Diagnostic Lab-in-a-Backpack in Ecuador this fall. He also heard about Rice 360° partnerships with communities around the world to design and implement low-cost, high-performance technologies that prevent disease, improve health and reduce poverty.
The diagnostic backpack is a battery-powered tool kit that doctors can readily carry into otherwise inaccessible villages to provide much-needed testing and treatment. It includes off-the-shelf and custom-designed technology such as a microscope, otoscope, pulse oximeter, power control unit, solar panel, basic medical supplies and more.
This past summer, two Rice students participating in Beyond Traditional Borders—a program that fosters the creation of globally appropriate health technologies that address pressing health needs of the developing world—traveled to Ecuador to work with a foundation to conduct preliminary field-tests of the backpack. They also tested two of its spin-off versions, the OB/GYN Backpack and the Community Health Outreach Pack.
Two dozen diagnostic backpacks are soon to be delivered to Ecuador for healthcare providers working in remote jungle and mountainous regions of the country, which straddles the equator in western South America. Rice students have also tested backpack prototypes in remote locations in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Botswana, Lesotho and Malawi.
During the ambassador’s visit to Rice, Gallegos also visited the Baker Institute and had lunch with Rice President David Leebron. The two men discussed ways to further enhance collaborations and cooperation between Rice and Ecuador.