Women in Kenya drag jerry cans of water 4 kilometers through a parched landscape. Photo by Erin Gray/Mercy Corps.

How bad is the drought and famine in East Africa? Climate scientist Simon Mason elaborates in this video interview. Comparing East Africa’s situation to other drought situations, Mason highlights the dramatic impacts in a region receiving 5 to 25% of its usual expected rainfall.

With the world facing more and more severe climate-related disruptions, Mason explains some ways in which weather forecasting is being used to help humanitarian aid organizations prepare responses in the short and long term. Check out his interview here.

The use of technology in humanitarian aid planning is on the rise. Photo: Esther Gibbons (Flicker)

2011 is over, but the impact technology had on humanitarian aid planning last year could be just beginning to emerge.

Humanitarian issues demand immediate solutions. In 2011, a lot of solutions to crises placed heavy emphasis on technology. Here are three notable examples:

Disaster prone Bangladesh turned to GPS to provide early weather warnings to fishermen.

Airtel, a private mobile operator in Bangladesh will provide early weather warnings to fishermen using its global positioning system via cell phones in partnership with the Center for Global Change, the Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods and two international NGOs, according to IRIN.

More than half on Bangladesh’s population uses mobile phones. Early weather warnings could prove to be a life-saving tool. "75 percent of the country’s population lives in rural, disaster-prone areas, an ideal environment in which to exploit the potential of mobile phones to mitigate disasters," IRIN reported.

Technology has helped put Kibera on the map, literally.

Finding Kibera, a district of Nairobi, on a map before 2009 was not an easy task because it wasn’t on one. The location of schools, medical facilities, water points and other basic information was simply not available. As a result, The Map Kibera Project was created in order to provide this information. The goal: to train nine Kibera residents in using GPS devices to gather geographical information in a "citizen mapping" project.

Now this information is available on OpenStreetMap, a global map anyone can view and edit. Organizers plan to continue adding information on the map and eventually start mapping other communities.

Mobile phones have turned ordinary people into extraordinary philanthropists.

This past year, one of the worst famines in modern history struck the Horn of Africa. Humanitarian aid and donor government assistance poured in from all over the world. One campaign, "Kenyans for Kenya," set a goal to raise $5.28 million dollars in one month. Within 10 days, the goal was met and a bigger goal of $10.56 million set. By September 1, more than $7 million was collected, $1.6 million through private donations.
Contributions, most of them from Kenyan citizens and organizations, were made through a mobile phone money transfer service operated by telecom firm Safaricom. The money collected has been used to send money to affected areas through the Kenyan Red Cross Society, IRIN reports. This has been one of the most successful humanitarian fundraising campaigns Kenya has ever seen, and its efforts are ongoing.

These are only a few examples of how technology has positively impacted humanitarian responses to crises. Technology isn’t the answer to all the world’s problems, but it’s proving to be an effective tool.

Medic Mobile works with the simplest of cell phones to help provide health care to those far away from their nearest hospital. Photo: Fabiola Coupet/Mercy Corps.

In rural communities around the world, the virtual doctor is in.

The distance between far-flung communities and their nearest hospitals can be fatal. Medic Mobile bridges the gap using a common household item: the cell phone. It’s not the same as a living, breathing doctor, but Medic Mobile comes pretty close, and it does so using a list of platforms that is strikingly similar to what you might find on a smart phone. These seemingly-sophisticated technologies can work on even the most basic of cell phones and computers, just like those found all over the developing world.

Medic Mobile’s Sim Apps, in addition to open-source platforms like FrontlineSMS, OpenMRS, Ushahidi, Google Apps, and HealthMap, allow hospital staff sitting at a computer to communicate with multiple health workers in rural areas. The health workers’ phones are basic, but Medic Mobile uses a tiny parallel SIM card that fits between any GSM phone and a carrier’s cell phone to allow these phones to run the necessary apps. The Medic Mobile website provides a more in-depth description of the many technologies it employs. In a 2009 interview with GOOD magazine, co-founder Lucky Gunasekara described Medic Mobile’s importance:

We can communicate need in real time. Say I am a community health worker in rural Malawi and one of my patients gets really sick. Before this system came along, for a lot of clinics, the patient would die, because even though I have some basic health training as a community health worker, there is nothing I can really do. They're still just as disconnected as the communities they live in. Now with our system clinicians see things in real time and they communicate back.

In addition to saving lives, the program saves time: its website says that in six months, the pilot program in Malawi “saved hospital staff 1200 hours of follow-up time and over $3,000 in motorbike fuel” and cut 900 hours of travel time for antiretroviral therapy monitors by eliminating their need to hand-deliver reports to the hospital.

Since its inception in 2009, Medic Mobile has expanded to Honduras, Haiti, Uganda, Mali, Kenya, South Africa, Cameroon, India and Bangladesh. The platform is adaptable to different situations: it was used in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake to link first responders and locals in need of help. As a result of its successes, Medic Mobile was recently named one of the Top 11 in 2011 mobile health innovators of the year by mHealth Alliance.

The proliferation of cell phones is sparking a revolution in developing-world health care. Innovators from all reaches of the globe have used the near-ubiquitous technology to increase health care affordability and access. By adapting sophisticated platforms to basic devices, they’re turning $15 cell phones into invaluable lifelines.

Editor’s note: For more information on the connection, check out A Medical Lab in the Palm of Your Hand, A Dose of Cell Phone Surveillance Helps Aid Workers Save Lives, and Paging Dr. Smartphone, to name a few.

Reliance on quality produce from Africa prompted Albert Heijn to undertake aid projects. Photo: Erik Mandell for MercyCorps

A Dutch company looks to combine international aid with corporate profit, according to allAfrica.com.

The supermarket chain Albert Heijn is funding and conducting development projects in Africa, including constructing water systems in Ghana, farmer training programs in South Africa, and expanded schooling in Kenya. But the company doesn’t claim that its efforts are based in charity. "It's very much business-driven. It bears almost no resemblance to charity or good causes," says Henri Zondag, chair of the Albert Heijn foundation.

Albert Heijn supermarkets rely heavily on quality produce from Africa, and the idea is that healthier, happier and better-educated suppliers make trade relationships more productive. The Dutch government is a player in this arrangement too, encouraging business-sector participation in cooperative development relationships and economic benefits for the Netherlands. The government hopes that “making a profit can be a great incentive for [development] projects.” The company envisions projects that forge partnerships that lead to greater profit. If both are correct, in the long term all parties involved could win.

Erik Mandell is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in public administration and global leadership at Portland State. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

A foreign domestic worker looks after her elderly client. Photo: Jerry Wong (flickr)

From low-tech light bulbs in the Philippines to microfinance in Nicaragua, our team of young writers covered lots of ground this year.

Here's a rewind on the themes that struck the strongest chords with readers, and the money quote from each piece. As we head into 2012, odds are that these big ideas will keep resonating.

Lack of electricity is a huge barrier to overcoming poverty by
Megan Kelly, Feb. 10:

As long as those hundreds of millions remain in the dark, they will remain poor," and yet bringing electricity to areas that have none lacks global funding and attention. It's not even part of the Millennium Development Goals.

Megan made a sweeping case for attention to energy poverty, a theme we've continued to cover.

Microfinance isn't a magic bullet by Laura Mortara, Jan. 24:

And any situation involving loan and credit is dangerous, especially when people are allowed to borrow irresponsibly. The failure of microfinance in India is largely due in part to MFI's shifting their focus from non-profit to profit-making industries and the corruption that follows thereafter. In addition to this, microfinance in India expanded way too quickly without the experience or infrastructure to support it.

Laura rounded up the previous year's run of bad news about the microfinance sector with a wealth of links to the best coverage.

Used soda bottles light up the world, for free by Brynn Opsahl, Aug. 18:

A used plastic bottle filled with water and a touch of bleach is placed in a hole of a tin roof. For up to five years, 50 watts of light fill up the once-gloomy windowless shack any time the sun is out

Brynn's look at this shockingly simple, effective idea was one of several articles to land in the Christian Science Monitor as part of a partnership we forged with them this year.

Does China's rise mean U.S. decline? by Chris Sharp, Feb. 4:

According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, 44 percent of Americans believe China is already the world’s top economic power, compared to 27 percent who think it’s the U.S.

Chris's piece rebutted the popular cliche about China's looming global power, drawing on a post by Foreign Policy's Daniel Drezner to argue that the U.S.-China relationship is about interdependence, not domination.

The female remittance economy: A hidden global network of mothers and money by Eliza Slater, May 11:

Remittances are a significant part of an unofficial global aid network, worth $325 billion last year. That’s three times the size of official foreign development aid spending.

Eliza zoomed into the human scale of some staggering numbers, showing how shipping cash to one's relatives abroad has become, among other things, an important part of modern femininity around the world.

As we mentioned last week, Global Envision is planning some big new initiatives in 2012. Stay tuned—we're looking forward to talking with you about whatever comes next.

With a shared currency, entrepreneurs like this Tanzanian vendor won't have to change money when selling their products in other countries. Photo: justCRONO (flickr).

Has the eurozone crisis made shared currencies passe? East African leaders don’t think so, and they’re looking to Europe for an example of what not to do.

Economic integration isn’t a new idea for the East African Community. Its five member states&mdashUganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi&mdashalready have free movement of goods and labor, thanks to a customs union and, since last year, a common market (a type of trade bloc). According to EAC Deputy Secretary General Dr. Enos Bukuku, a shared currency would build on this by controlling price instability and exchange rate volatility among the states, writes In2EastAfrica. He says this would encourage businesses to invest and spur development in the region.

An EAC monetary union could face many of the same problems Europe has already experienced. Critics point out that the five EAC states’ economies differ greatly in size and scope. Kenya’s GDP is $31,408,632,915, while Burundi, with a fifth of Kenya’s population, has a GDP of $1,610,544,922, according to the World Bank. This could mirror the dynamic between powerful European states like Germany and the EU’s smaller states like Greece, as Tanzanian IMF head John Wakeman-Linn told The Financial Times. But EAC Secretary-General Dr. Sezibera doesn’t think this will be an issue. “If you look at EAC trade statistics, all the partner states have gained. I do not think Kenya will swallow up the other countries; it will only enrich the economic base of the community,” he said in an interview with The East African.

To the citizens who will be affected by these changes, the European Union’s tribulations are probably either unknown or seemingly distant, but EAC leaders are paying attention and believe that they can avoid Europe’s mistakes. At a round of negotiations in Uganda earlier this month, Bukuku said "For the eurozone ... maybe there wasn't well coordinated fiscal policy management and enforcement. If there are benchmarks that are agreed upon, it would be expected that the community would also agree on sanctions and enforcement mechanisms," reports The Christian Science Monitor. He also cited the issue of fiscal discipline and said that many of Europe’s problems are a result of the eurozone countries not having “lived up to what was in the treaty.”

Economists like the World Bank’s Paul Collier warn that a currency union could hurt East African economies, according to allAfrica.com. Others feel it’s simply inappropriate in the current economic climate; The Financial Times cites shrinking regional growth and depreciating currencies as discouraging indicators. But Wakeman-Linn disagrees, telling the newspaper that even if a common currency isn’t feasible, putting the necessary components in place could help East Africa:

“All the things that they need to do to achieve a common currency – integrate financial markets, trade policy, labour markets, capital markets, statistics databases, develop easy mechanisms for exchanging each others’ currencies – all of these things would be extremely valuable and would help develop the regional economy, and so these are things they should do.”

By revealing the cracks in the world’s financial systems, the global financial crisis has provided developing nations with a handy "What not to do" guide. EAC leaders are strong in their belief that a shared currency is possible, even if there are challenges along the way. “The monetary union is a possibility, not a dream,” Dr. Sezibera told The Financial Times. They originally hoped to implement the currency union by next year, a deadline that has proven to be overly optimistic.

With the lessons they’re learned from the euro’s failures, they hope to avoid some of the bumps along the way.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

Women farmers in Africa produce over 60 percent of all food crops. CIMMYT (flickr)

Women comprise 43 percent of the world’s farmers. In Africa, it’s 80 percent. Women plant, harvest, process and sell their crops, but men continue to dominate agricultural science and research. This may be about to change.

African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) is trying to close the R&D gender gap. Their program fast-tracks female science careers in agriculture, empowering them to contribute more effectively to hunger and poverty alleviation in their own communities - a model that could be replicated internationally.

Although African women produce 60 to 80 percent of food crops, they receive significantly less (5% as of 2008) of the agricultural training and tools available to men, says the United Nations. A 2010-2011 research report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization shows that women could produce 20-30 percent more if they had equal access. This creates a subsequent increase in household income, health, and community food supply. The East Africa Report emphasizes that research is also pivotal in fostering innovation. Without a seat at the table, women cannot influence practices. Who better to innovate than the farmers themselves?

Every 30 seconds a child dies of malaria. Scientists have genetically modified a mosquito that could potentially stop the spread of malaria. Photo:Gravitywave (flickr)

This article was republished in The Christian Science Monitor.

Bloodthirsty? Yes! Pesky? Absolutely! Malaria transmitters? Possibly not anymore.

Mosquitoes are getting a genetic makeover, which could potentially halt the endemic spread of malaria, according to a group of Johns Hopkins University researchers.

Mosquitoes have been nibbling away at birds, reptiles, and humans for nearly 30 million years. They hold primary responsibility for infecting approximately 300 million people with malaria and causing 1 million deaths a year in more than 100 countries. Scientists have been able to activate a gene that blocks these tiny insects from developing the malaria parasite in their guts. While this discovery seemed promising initially, researchers struggled to design a mosquito that could out-survive their malaria-infected counterparts.

The answer, they discovered, lies in controlling a protein called SM1 peptide. When this protein was activated, studies found that “after nine egg-laying cycles, the mix of genetically-modified (GM) mosquitoes and wild had changed to 70/30,” according to How Stuff Works?.

In spite of the promising findings, scientists remain leery of releasing the GM mosquitoes into the wild. These tests have only been done on malaria-carrying mice; the long term effects on humans are still unknown. Releasing tens of thousands of mosquitoes into the wild has never been done before, and there is a possibility that the GM mosquitoes could eventually develop immunity to the malaria parasite.

Perhaps the most compelling argument against releasing these mosquitoes comes at the heels of recent findings of an anti-malaria vaccine, largely funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. When 6,000 African children were tested with the vaccine, “it reduced the risk of infection with severe malaria by 47 percent during the year after the shots,” reports the New York Times.

As President Obama stated earlier this year, “Africa’s future is up to Africans.” Finding an end to malaria has the potential to lift African nations out of poverty by spurring educational advancement, market productivity, and economic growth. And ending malaria would certainly hold great promise for Africa’s future by cultivating healthy young minds of students who can sustain their educational development. In fact, studies done in Kenya by the World Health Organization found that the “disease kept children out of school for 11 percent [of the school year]."

While the long term impacts of GM mosquitoes and vaccines currently elude us, dispersing these scientific discoveries could save the lives of millions of impoverished people. The end to the means has yet to be uncovered, but these findings could pave the road to a usable solution. And that is something to buzz about.

Women tending sweet potato crops in Tanzania. Photo: The Gates Foundation (Flickr)

Sometimes one class is all it takes. One Maasai woman, recently selected for a course on potato seed farming, is now shipping seed by the ton.

Christine Nashuru lives in the southwestern region of the Rift Valley Province in Kenya in a traditional Maasai community. Cultural barriers and poverty blocked her access to formal education. Like other women in her community, she tried her hand at farming, but the results were less than spectacular. Until recently.

The International Potato Center (CIP) selected Nashuru to take part in a course that taught more efficient potato-farming practices. Traditionally, potato seeds require about seven generations to maximize yields. CIP taught Nashuru and others how to maximize in just three generations. In 2010, she sold 10.3 tons of potato seeds, and this year she hopes to top 80 tons.

Reducing the amount of time it takes to maximize yields means lower production costs and more flexibility to experiment with different varieties and tactics. CIP’s campaign has increased the yields of 15,000 farmers in East Africa by 20 percent. These farmers’ incomes are increasing, and so are the food stocks of their communities.

This campaign is targeted towards those with little education. The less-educated are prevented from reaching their full potential to help themselves and their communities. CIP is looking to change that by showing that one way to fill stomachs is to fill minds.

Ben Osborn is a 2011 graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

Mobile phones are increasingly important throughout the developing world. Photo: ICT4D.at (flickr)

Around the world, mobile phone technology is being touted as a life changing path from poverty to prosperity. Instant price data from global markets, mobile banking, credit card transfers on the go, mobile classrooms, remote-control irrigation and even apps that repel mosquitoes are just a few of the ways that mobile phone technology is leading the fight against poverty. But, for the world's rush of new mobile phone users, there's just one problem. Where to plug in and charge?

As mobile technology continues to advance and build pathways out of poverty for many in the developing world, answers to the charging issues are popping up in the developed world.

University of Wisconsin researchers are developing a new technology that could charge mobile phones by harvesting the kinetic energy that humans create when walking, said the BBC. In Kenya, the solution is bicycles. Inventor Pascal Katana and students from University of Nairobi have made this simple, popular mode of transportation into much more. The energy from cycling simultaneously charges mobile phones for a start-up cost of only 350 Kenyan shillings, or $4. And in a few years, a mobile phone or laptop user may be able to recharge by simply pointing the device at the sun, says NPR.

Ideas like these can be a big help in developing countries, where the ever-increasing abilities of mobile phones are in great demand. Nearly 60 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa use mobile phones, according to a 2010 study by Jenny C. Aker and Isaac M. Mbiti. A mobile phone acts as much more than a tool for communication — it strengthens the relationship between impoverished people and global markets and creates new business opportunities for local communities.

To gain access to these income boosting business opportunities, mobile phone technology will be a crucial tool moving forward. And both accessible and affordable ways to charge the devices will be instrumental in poverty alleviation. Check out the video below to see how these opportunities are coming about as the power is flipped on — or, in this case, cranked.

Over one billion people live on less than one dollar a day, according to the U.N. But what can you actually buy with a dollar?

It seems like something that would vary across countries. Luckily, the World Food Programme recently released a series of videos in which it seeks to answer that question. Country specialists in Nepal, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Guatemala, Somalia, Kenya, and the Philippines each went to their local markets with the equivalent of about one U.S. dollar and attempted to put together a meal. Watch as Reem Nada visits a market in Alexandria, Egypt.

The shorts are entertaining, but present a rather bleak reality. Almost all of the investigators come up short nutritionally. In Nepal, Deepesh Das Shresta leaves the market holding a few small bananas and a loaf of white bread. Meat is categorically too expensive, and staying within budget means many investigators can’t purchase all of the components necessary to create the meals that are considered cultural staples. It appears that those living on less than a dollar a day are also living far below their daily caloric and nutrient requirements.

Feeding oneself on less than a dollar is tricky business under the best of circumstances. Even worse, the recent volatility of the price of staple foods such as rice has jumped three times since 2008, says the New York Times — meaning that dollar must now be stretched even further.

The rest of the videos can be found on the World Food Programme website. The videos for Ethiopia, Kenya, and the Philippines are listed separately.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

Is cold, hard cash more or less helpful to those in need than conditional aid? Photo: jtyerse (flickr)

Economics is about choices. What I spend money on is what I value most, because it comes at the cost of something else. People are rational, and thus make rational decisions—right?

This is the premise, says NPR, behind a new charity called GiveDirectly, which has removed the conditions from the money it gives its beneficiaries. While most charities and NGOs provide financial assistance, they do so by specifying what the money can be used for. GiveDirectly runs on the assumption that, given money through mobile banking, people will prioritize for themselves where that cash is most needed — and spend it accordingly, whether that be children’s education, health care or business startup costs.

And yet the economic principle of "rational" decision-making is oversimplified. People of every income bracket do not always spend money in the ways that would most benefit their families. According to a study on the spending habits of the poor, families that earn less than $2 a day in the average country studied spent 2 percent of their income on education, with about 5 to 7 percent going toward alcohol, tobacco, festivals and other entertainment. Spending patterns for the average American, according to a 2008 US Department of Labor study, are almost identical.

GiveDirectly is still in early stages, and is conducting a study of its own to see how its money will be spent under real life conditions. Unconditional aid undoubtedly shows a higher level of respect for beneficiaries' decision-making, and there is reason to hope it succeeds. Giving money without condition lowers administrative costs because it requires no follow up, meaning that a higher percentage of every dollar donated goes directly to those who need it.

But if a lack of conditions means a choice to spend more money at the local bar, not to put more children through school, GiveDirectly may be, at best, ineffective.

Correction: Aug. 16, 2011

A previous version of this post misstated the amount of money an MIT study found poor families spending on tobacco and alcohol.

Empty pharmacy shelves in the West African country of Guinea illustrate the problems of medication access in developing countries. Photo: Julien Harneis (flickr)

Even in the most remote parts of Kenya, there are little shops that sell sodas and mobile phone cards. But too often, the pharmacies of the nation's clinics and public hospitals are empty.

Innovative rural distribution channels are working for Coca-Cola and a new Johns Hopkins study suggests these same methods can work for the distribution of essential medicines.

According to a World Health Organization technical report, “essential drugs are those that satisfy the health care needs of the majority of the population; they should therefore be available at all times in adequate amounts and in the appropriate dosage forms, and at a price that individuals and the community can afford.” To see what makes the cut, check out WHO’s current essential medicines list.

This past May, the pharmacy shelves in Kenya remained bare as the staff awaited a delivery of essential medicines from the national government that was already weeks late. While essential and lifesaving medicines weren't available, junk foods and sodas were.

This is not just a problem in Kenya, but throughout the developing world. Scarcity of basic medicines, health products, and clinicians is an ongoing issue for poor countries with struggling public health systems. In fact, Save the Children published a report this month which claims that "40 million children under five in 25 developing countries live in 'healthcare deserts' where they are deprived even of the most basic health services." In a similar report, the World Health Organization estimates that 30 percent of people worldwide lack dependable access to essential medications — in the most impoverished regions of Africa and Asia, it's 50 percent.

Students at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's International Vaccine Access Center have taken notice, releasing a study comparing public and private sector distribution structures and how these sectors might collaborate to increase equitable access to medication and health products. “Companies selling soda and mobile phone cards work in the same hard-to-reach markets in Sub-Saharan Africa as essential medicine distributors,” Kyla Hayford, a doctoral student who coauthored the report, explained to Science Daily, “but they have been far more successful at modifying their systems and aligning incentives to overcome distribution barriers.”

Coca Cola, for example, has developed “manual distribution centers” in East Africa that depend on bicycles and carts to deliver crates of sodas to remote and inaccessible outposts. In some places without passable roads, this distribution system accounts for more than 95 percent of sales, according to the IVAC report. Manual distribution could bring vaccines and antibiotics to these isolated communities, too. Mobile clinics and vaccine distribution do exist in places like rural Kenya but they are informal and often spearheaded by a determined health worker or small group of dedicated community health volunteers.

The IVAC study cites that more than 50 percent of hospitals studied in Kenya did not have vital broad-spectrum antibiotics at any given time. Further, Kenya is not just any developing country, but an economic forerunner in Africa with an economy that grew a promising 5.6 percent in 2010, according to moneycontrol.com.

For the IVAC and many others, getting medicine to the developing world is a matter of distribution, distribution, distribution. Public-private partnerships that involve "sharing knowledge, sharing infrastructure, generating appropriate performance monitoring metrics, and investing in product innovation" can help fix this, the study concludes.

But it's no coincidence that vaccines and antibiotics have such a hard time getting to market. The global health system has no arrangement to incentivize their development, production, or distribution. True health equity also requires financial commitments to research and develop lifesaving drugs. Next, they must be produced and sold at prices accessible to the average person in poor countries.

A recent article from The Guardian outlines some ideas about how the poor can become viable consumers and consequently influence the supply-and-demand chain for essential medicines. Poor clientele in developing countries could afford to pay the price of medications in a competitive market with generic production. However, the current system prevents this by allowing companies to patent brand-name drugs and maintain monopolies on their production, often for long periods of time. Instead, The Guardian suggests “annual reward payments based on the product's health impact” be given out to alter the incentive scheme and favor more pro-poor medicine development. If implemented, this policy would reward the research and development of life-saving and essential medicines — those with broad-reaching global health benefits — rather than specific and non-essential medicines which treat the minor ailments of advanced industrial societies.

Increasing access to essential medicines and technologies could prevent and cure diseases for millions in the developing world. The solution is not simple; it’s not just distribution. What makes commercial distribution so effective has to do with profitability and there is no profit to be had in the public health sector. Similarly, the impetus for new drug development depends on what has the potential to make the most money and not necessarily what will save the most lives. But if these techniques can be appropriated and incentives redirected for the greater good rather than profit, the benefits will be tremendous.

Girls who lack access to sanitary pads may miss up to 40 days of school a year. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps.

In the United States, missing close to two months of school every year might get you expelled. For millions of women and girls in the developing world, it's a routine.

They lack access to something many modern women in the developed world probably take for granted: sanitary pads. Even when pads are locally available, many girls simply can’t afford them: UPI reports that in South Africa, a pack of 10 might cost $2. In many areas, that is more than a day’s worth of wages, according to North Carolina State University. Girls who don’t have access to pads during their period miss school due to embarrassment, fear of being teased and cultural taboos. Some try to use newspaper, old rags, or mud instead, methods that pose health risks and barely even work.

Many girls fall behind in school or drop out entirely as a result of this simple problem. For a variety of reasons, it’s one that’s not often discussed openly. So how do you solve a problem that no one wants to talk about? Fortunately, many businesses and organizations are looking for solutions.

At the same time that FemCare, a part of Procter & Gamble, sells Always-brand sanitary pads in U.S. supermarkets, it seeks to provide the same products to African schoolgirls. But the problem is thornier than you might expect. Beyond a simple lack of supplies, schools also often lack the facilities that allow girls to use feminine products in the first place. They need private spaces to change pads during the day and running water to wash their hands. To address this, FemCare built bathrooms and constructed water pipelines to schools, says the New York Times. They also provide disposal containers and have taught teachers how to incinerate the waste. Of course, there’s something in it for P&G, too: they hope that girls in Africa will become lifelong users of their products.

The problem has also inspired a great deal of innovation as individuals attempt to design new products that can be manufactured more cheaply and sustainably than name brands. Swedish university students used water hyacinth, an invasive species that chokes off Kenyan water routes, to create the Jani pad. In a double whammy, It’s both biodegradable and made from a seemingly endless resource that no one likes.

Starting in 2008, Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE) tried another tack: it designed a manufacturing process that anyone could replicate. Their award-winning approach makes pads from readily available materials like banana-stalk fibers, which are then processed on inexpensive machines that local people can purchase. Hopefully, SHE’s innovations will better enable people in developing nations to start their own businesses to manufacture the pads. This also lets the finished product be tailored to the needs of women and girls from diverse cultures.

Other projects are born from the creativity of local entrepreneurs. Makapads, invented by a university professor in Uganda, are made from papyrus and waste paper and produced on locally manufactured machines, reports IRIN.

Often, trying to solve a problem in the developing world is like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube. Each group toggles the pieces a bit differently. Hopefully, in the end, someone makes them all line up.

Sanergy (sanitation+energy) is an MIT-based start-up with a mission: Employ sewage. Produce jobs. One glorified outhouse at a time.

Forty percent of the global population lacks access to adequate sanitation. Where poverty is endemic, so are sanitation challenges. Sanergy’s answer is to tackle both issues at once. Recent winner of the prestigious Echoing Green Fellowship (pdf) and the MIT 100K Entrepreneurship Business Plan Contest, their method is simple: build, collect, convert.

Sanergy sells inexpensive, green, pay-per-use or membership-based sanitation centers to local entrepreneurs. Waste deposited into airtight containers is collected and exchanged daily for clean containers. It is then transferred to a central plant where the waste is processed into energy and fertilizer to be sold to the national grid and local farmers, respectively.

In addition to a focus on sustainability, Sanergy has an eye on immediate returns — the company projects their franchisees will make back their investment in about four months, according to NPR.

Sanergy has already scaled to 60 sanitation sites in Nairobi and begun converting waste into fertilizer. They hope to eventually expand to every block of the city’s slums, and ultimately, to all of sub-Saharan Africa and India, turning a socially sticky public health crisis into economic opportunities where they are needed most.

Check out Sanergy's video for more details.

Sanergy Overview from Ani Vallabhaneni on Vimeo.