Diarrhea kills. Innovation wants to win this war

Did you know that every year 1.5 million children under age of 5 die from diarrhea?

443 million school days are lost by children with infectious diseases. 40% of these illnesses are transmitted at school. SoaPen is a soap-pen that will improve children`s handwashing and reduce the incidence of diseases and diarrhea. A group of students won the Unicef Wearables for Good contest with this invention. The soap is low cost and has easy assemblage.

It is ideal for teachers to draw over children`s hands. Children`s task is wash their hands until the ink exit. The SoaPen also has an app targeted to teachers, with hygiene tips for them to teach kids.

A source of bacteria is our smartphone. According to a study from Stanford University, the screens of phones accumulate more germs that the discharge of a public toilet. Kyocera Corp., a Japanese manufacturer, has launched the first phone that can be washed with soap and water. It is also resistant to crashes. I don’t know about you, but that’s what I need, a cellphone resistant to myself!

Another effective weapon in the fight against germs is the bio sensitive surgical glove. It reacts with E. coli, pathogenic bacteria, so the word “contaminated”, printed on its surface, change the color from blue to red. To get to this formula they used purified silk protein. The researchers will also test other substances so that the glove can react selectively to different pathogen.

To close our selection, another place quite dirty are the door handles. Imagine how many people open the door of a toilet with dirty hands in a shopping mall. The cleaning service never cleans doorknobs. With that in mind, students at a school in Hong Kong created a doorknob that is sterilized by itself. The creators made the knob with titanium oxide, material commonly used in water treatment due to their antibacterial properties. In addition there is a glass cylinder that emits UV ray, completing the process. To get even better, the device is self sufficient, the opening movement of the door generates enough energy to keep the device running.