The U.S. Agency for International Development unveiled Friday its five final nominees for the agency’s Grand Challenge for Development, an initiative to find innovative solutions to combat Ebola in West Africa — a model that could become part of USAID’s long-term strategy for tackling global emergencies.
“Fighting Ebola: A Grand Challenge for Development” seeks to outfit health workers battling the Ebola epidemic with a range of new defenses, like cooling mechanisms inside PPT suits to prevent heatstroke, colored foam to ease sanitation or a rub-on electrostatic force field, or fabric with a cooling function that targets specific points on the body to keep down overall temperature.
The five finalists brought ideas from a range of backgrounds — from military to academia to sportswear manufacturing — with the goal of finding new ways to support health care workers. This is one of the first ideas to emerge from USAID’s Global Development Lab, which issued issued a call in October and received more than 1,500 ideas from all around the world.
About the author
Molly Andersmollyanders_dev
Molly Anders is a former U.K. correspondent for Devex. Based in London, she reports on development finance trends with a focus on British and European institutions. She is especially interested in evidence-based development and women’s economic empowerment, as well as innovative financing for the protection of migrants and refugees. Molly is a former Fulbright Scholar and studied Arabic in Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco.
