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Necessity Breeds Lifesaving Invention – and a Hub to Launch More Innovation
Dr. Dayo Olakulehin, a young doctor in Lagos, Nigeria, fell asleep while manually ventilating a 5-year-old boy with breathing difficulties. That led him to invent D-Box, a cheap, portable, rechargeable ventilator – and then he helped develop a company to launch the device and other medical innovations in Africa.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Your Cheap Solar Lamp is Garbage
It’s easy to think of “the poor” in two-dimensional, homogenous terms and rattle off assumptions like "They’re poor people, aren’t they happy with anything?" or "Isn’t something better than nothing?" Incorrect. As the charity research organization SolarAid once put it, “The quickest way to fix a problem is the best,” and in most cases, that means quality.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
- Tags
- Base of the Pyramid, solar
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Adapting to Climate Change (Part 1): Health Care
Climate change has led to an increase in vector-borne diseases, primarily impacting the world's poor. The Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network supports various private-sector solutions to this problem, and Intellecap is supporting these interventions and mapping pilot project results across various sectors.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Seven Wishes from Seven Thought Leaders for Financial Inclusion in 2016
2015 was an important year for the world of financial inclusion. To better understand and build on the year's successes, BRAC approached the Microfinance CEO Working Group to inquire about their wishes for financial inclusion over the coming year. Here’s what seven industry thought leaders shared with them.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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IFMR Investment Launches $38 Million Debt Fund in India
IFMR Investment Managers Pvt Ltd, a Chennai-based asset management company, is raising a Rs.250 crore (about $38 million) debt fund to invest in businesses that target consumers at the bottom half of the pyramid, such as firms that finance affordable housing or agri-business.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- South Asia
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How a Partnership Led an Outdoor Equipment Company to Start a New Division
When Mountain Safety Research, an outdoor equipment manufacturer, donated gear following the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, the team started to ask whether some of its products might be adapted to meet the needs of remote villages. A deep partnership withPATH, a Seattle-based nonprofit focused on global health innovation, evolved over time and eventually led MSR to launch a global health division last May.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Sloppy Numbers About Poor Households
Affordability – the ratio between price and household income – matters and gets insufficient attention. While there has been a huge effort to sell quality goods and services at a low price point, there's been relatively little effort to understand incomes and spending patterns in poor households.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Improving Lives and Livelihoods With Better Healthcare in Chile
The Chilean company AccuHealth, a pioneer in virtual clinical hospitals, has joined the Business Call to Action (BCtA) with a patient-centric tele-monitoring service designed to improve the health and livelihoods of chronically ill patients with value-added medical care at an affordable cost. BCtA is a global initiative that encourages companies to fight poverty through inclusive business models. It is supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other international organizations.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Latin America
