Tufts students involved with the Village Zero Project this past weekend traveled to the annual Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) at George Washington University and competed in the second annual CGI U Commitments Challenge, a competition of ideas and projects from college students.
The Village Zero Project, which was founded by three Tufts students and aims to track cholera in Bangladesh using cell phone or mobile health technology, advanced to the final round of the online bracket for the CGI U Commitments Challenge. The project ultimately lost to Panda Cycles, an organization from George Washington University that sells and donates bicycles made of bamboo.
The Village Zero Project applied to take part in the competition and was selected as part of the top 16 organizations that would take part in the bracket, according to Co?Founder and Chief Technical Officer of the Village Zero Project David Meyers.
Although the winners received no financial award, they did have the opportunity to shake Bill Clinton's hand on stage this past weekend, according to Co?Founder and Chief Financial Officer of the Village Zero Project Kate de Klerk.
The Village Zero Project was created last summer after the three co?founders of the organization came together during a class titled "Epidemiological Methods," according to Meyers, a junior.
"Our mission right now is to track cholera in Bangladesh using cell phone technology or mobile health technology, and we're doing that because we predict, and a lot of members of the scientific community who work with cholera in Bangladesh predict, that outbreaks annually start along the coast and then move inland as the bacteria gets into the sewage system and contaminates the water supply," De Klerk said.
"Our goal is to track the spread of the disease so that we can have hard data that show the movement of the disease and so that we can make a case for diverting resources to the region where [outbreaks] start annually," she added.
De Klerk said the most important elements of the competition for their organization were networking and name recognition.
"I think it was a reward in and of itself to be in the finals, and really we've benefitted so much from that alone, "De Klerk said. "We've already been getting emails from people who are interested in helping us and partnering with us."
De Klerk added that the Village Zero Project was featured on the front page of a leading Bangladeshi newspaper.
"I think we've already started seeing the benefits in terms of how we look - how we're perceived by the population around us - not only in the United States, but also the people that we've worked with in Bangladesh," Co?Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Village Zero Project Maia Majumder said.
Around 1,200 students attended CGI U 2012, which Former U.S. President Bill Clinton launched in 2007 to inspire college students to act and create projects, or "Commitments to Action," concerning various topics.
Meyers explained that every day there is a large outbreak of cholera in Bangladesh, and it moves in waves across the country.
"So it first starts near the coastal region, and from there it spreads inland, and theoretically it should be possible to track where the cholera's coming from back to the coastal communities that it comes in from the water and starts affecting at the beginning of each cycle," Meyers said.
Community health workers will use cell phones to both record the time and geographic location of cases of cholera and to photograph positive identifications of cholera based on dipstick tests, according to Meyers.
The Village Zero Project is planning a trip to Bangladesh this summer to get in touch with some of the group's contacts there, according to Meyers.
"The goal this summer is to do some data collection and essentially come up with an initial idea of where we think the most susceptible locations are," Majumder, a senior, said.
"We're hoping that by next spring the organization will have established strong enough partnerships with cell phone companies and with health organizations on the ground that we'll be able to launch a pilot tracking program and get first?round data," de Klerk, a senior, said.
The ultimate goal of the initiative is to generate a map that tracks the spread of cholera in Bangladesh in a given year to help with disease prevention, according to Majumder. If the organization is able to define the specific area of outbreaks, prevention groups will be able to give resources to help develop sanitation infrastructure, according to Meyers.
"We have about a five? to six?year plan so far set up for the Village Zero Project, so this is a long?term project and we really do intend to see it all the way through," Majumder said. "The hope is that if this works in Bangladesh, that we'll be able to employ it in other countries that have endemic cholera as well."
"We're still very new and small, but we're really excited about the potential, and a lot of people think that is something that can have an impact," Meyers said.
