WE often think that big problems in the developing world require big, expensive and usually imported solutions, but we tend to ignore the innovative, low-tech and low-cost problem-solving taking place much closer to home. Take the problem of iodine deficiency that plagues the populations of Pakistan and India and is considered one of the most common causes of preventable mental retardation and brain damage in the world.

Solutions like iodised salt have been tried with considerable success but what happens to communities that are outside the reach of such programmes?

That’s what happened in the Indian state of Maharashtra, where tribal women didn’t have access to iodised salt. The solution came from an advertising company called Grey during a brainstorming session in their Singapore offices. Since iodine can be absorbed through the skin, why not create a small patch that the women can wear that will give them the required daily dosage? And since the tribal women in question were Hindu, why not make the patch into a bindi they could place on their foreheads? Grey partnered with an India NGO and the Indian government and thus the Jeevan Bindi was born, giving the tribal women of Maha­rash­tra their dose of iodine without changing their daily behaviour. It was a simple idea but one that will make a huge difference.

Examples abound of communities finding low-cost solutions.

We see a lot of similar innovation coming out of Africa as well, and the driving factors are the need to find low-cost solutions to local problems. Take Uganda, where over 27,000 children die of pneumonia every year, and where many of the deaths due to pneumonia are being misdiagnosed as malaria, which is also endemic in the area. How does one provide diagnostic facilities to people in remote and impoverished areas without training and deploying hundreds of medical workers and creating a complete health infrastructure that would entail spending millions of dollars?

Twenty-four-year-old Ugandan Brian Turyabagye, whose own grandmother nearly died due to misdiagnosis, came up with another solution. He designed a biomedical smart jacket which, when worn, would measure temperature, breathing rate and the sound of the lungs — eliminating most human error and diagnosing pneumonia three to four times faster than a doctor could. The reusable jacket could then be distributed to remote communities who would be trained in how to use this simple life-saving device.

Then there are problems for which solutions already exist, if one thinks a little laterally. One such issue is that girls in rural parts of the developing world often miss school during their periods (adding up to 10-12 per cent lost schooling time) because they do not have access to affordable sanitary napkins.

A solution to this was developed by Tamil Nadu’s Arunachalam Muruganantham, who invented a low-cost sanitary pad manufacturing machine which was then distributed to rural women who would themselves manufacture and sell the product they also ended up using. Not only was a long-standing problem addressed (though the inventor had only originally wanted to impress his wife) but economic opportunities were created as well.

Mobile phones stand out as an example of an existing technology with uses beyond what we usually imagine. We know that thanks to mobile banking, financial inclusion is now possible for millions of people who were previously outside the banking net, leading to economic opportunities and growth, but there are far more innovative techniques that are also being app­lied. Take for example the Grameen Foundation’s free mob­ile midwife programme which sends daily texts and voicemails offering women advice during pregnancy and the first year of the child’s life, ensuring that pregnant women and new mothers who do not have access to trained health workers receive crucial information regardless.

Even more interesting is how mobile phones were used to tackle the problem of counterfeit drugs in West Africa, where fake medicines claim up to 100,000 lives a year. Here, a Ghanaian tech company mPedigree came up with a simple solution: a 10-digit code on the medicine packing which the buyer then sends to a free SMS and shortly receives a message telling him whether the drug in question is genuine or not.

Many similar examples can be found of communities finding low-cost solutions to local problems simply by thinking laterally, and now — in a sort of reverse flow — many of these solutions are being exported from the developing to the developed world as well. There’s tremendous scope for this sort of work in Pakistan, where we simply do not have the resources for massively funded research projects. Look hard enough and you’ll find stories of innovation and invention in the unlikeliest places here, and all that’s needed to tap this potential is to organise and incentivise innovation and lateral thinking instead of focusing on reinventing the wheel.

The writer is a journalist.

Twitter: @zarrarkhuhro

Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2017