Newsletter

Welcome to the Global STEM Festival (GSF) 2021 - ‘creating real life solutions for real life problems’!

Check out these videos on Design Thinking. These videos will help you bring your ideas to life by taking you through the design thinking process.

Missed a newsletter? Don’t worry - you can find all of the previous newsletters alongside the supporting videos on the resources page of the GSF website.

Parents and guardians - don’t forget to have a look at the handy guide on the resources page to help you support the participants on their STEM journey!

Climate and Energy

Economic Development

Education

Equality

Health

What is Health?

Have you ever broken a bone? Seen a  dentist? Changed your exercise routine recently? Or perhaps visited a doctor? Our body and mind work together to keep us healthy, and happy and we must make sure we take care of them through balanced and regular exercise, proper nutrition, sleep and mindfulness.

Our health is not limited to our physical bodies, it also includes our minds as well. Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.

To live in and support a healthy and flourishing society, all members of that society must have access to health care and affordable diagnostic and medical treatments. Health care and educational institutions should have the ability to continue research and development to better understand diseases or illnesses that impact our health.

You can start by protecting your health and those  around you by making well-informed choices. You can raise awareness in your community about the importance of best health practices, healthy lifestyles, and people’s right to quality health care services, especially for the most vulnerable in society, such as the elderly and children. 

The importance of health has been highlighted by Mawlana Hazar Imam on several occasions.

As well as Mawlana Hazar Imam’s words, the importance of healthcare has been emphasised in muslim civiliazations for centuries. A key contribution by Muslims to the field of medicine was the founding of hospitals, or bimaristan. Bimaristan comes from Persian word ‘bimar’, meaning ill person and ‘stan’, meaning place. Medical services were available to all, male and female, young and old, rich or poor.

“I am here today because of my conviction that improving maternal, neonatal and child health should be one of the highest priorities on the global development agenda. I can think of no other field in which a well-directed effort can make as great or as rapid an impact. In no other development field is the potential leverage for progress greater than in the field of maternal and newborn health.”

 Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Summit in Toronto , Highness the Aga Khan, Aiglemont, 2014

“I underline the issue of ongoing knowledge, because healthcare and medicine are moving very quickly and it is essential that the institutions of healthcare in Eastern Africa should keep up to date with modern science. So the faculty of medicine at the Aga Khan University is not only going to provide service, it is also going to provide research, it is going to provide continuing education to the nursing and medical communities in East Africa.”

 initiation ceremony of Aga Khan University Hospital in Nakawa, Uganda, His Highness the Aga Khan, 2015

What are our goals?

There are several UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) relating to health, such as:

SDG 2: Zero hunger

SDG 3: Good health and well-being

SDG 6: Clean water and sanitation

Achieving these goals will lead to a healthier and more sustainable population.

News Updates

CPR Robots

For the first time, a robot has been made that can perform the life-saving chest compression—a vital part of sustaining oxygen flow through the body when someone has stopped breathing.

Called the LUCAS-3, this CPR robot will free up paramedic hands for other tasks essential for ensuring patient survival.

Once paramedics arrive and begin CPR or take over from bystanders who may have initiated it, the transition from manual compressions to LUCAS can be completed within seven seconds, ensuring continuity of compressions. As well as this, people can become tired when performing CPR manually which then affects the rate and quality of compressions, and patients may need to be moved from difficult locations, such as down a narrow flight of stairs, or remote places which makes the process more difficult. By using LUCAS, these issues are removed.

LUCAS works through Bluetooth connectivity, and performs CPR according to various inputs such as time between compressions and force of compressions,

Spotlight

Frugal Science and Global Health

Frugal science is a philosophy that inspires the development and distribution of affordable scientific tools to regions around the globe. Prof. Manu Prakash and his team at Stanford University engineer tools for extremely resource-constrained settings, especially in global health. They have developed various low-cost tools that have the potential to revolutionize global healthcare.

Abuzz - App to track mosquitos around the world

Mosquitoes can carry deadly diseases, including malaria, yellow fever, dengue, West Nile virus, chikungunya and Zika. The diseases spread by mosquitoes result in millions of deaths each year. To reduce mosquito-related deaths, we need to know where these mosquitoes are and what species they are.

Abuzz is a low-cost, fast, easy way to gain an incredible amount of new data about mosquitoes. Abuzz works by analysing sound files of mosquitoes to identify their species. Sound files can be collected by holding a cellphone microphone near a mosquito, recording its hum as it flies and uploading the recording to the Abuzz website. The researchers take the recorded audio and run it through an algorithm that matches that particular “buzz” with the species most likely to have produced it. After identifying these mosquitoes' time, location, and species, we can then put programmes in place to combat the transmissible diseases that different types of mosquitoes carry.

To learn more about Abuzz, check out this video

Dinner table discussions

These conversation starters will help you explore some of the issues related to health with your friends, family and children.  We hope that these will spark some insightful conversations and ideas

Age 5-8:

Resources to Explore:

Healthy habits for us all 
https://www.healthforkids.co.uk

Exploration Questions:

• Why do you think eating healthy is important?
• What are some of the things that you do to stay healthy each day?

Age 9-12

Resources to Explore:

The World Health Organisation
Raising Food insecurity in Madagascar 

Exploration Questions:

• Can you think of any other SDGs that may link to the theme of Health?
• Can you think of some ways to raise awareness about the importance of health amongst your friends and family?

Age 13 -17

Resources to Explore:

Zahida’s story: AKDN’s support to midwives
AKHS - Supporting health care in East Africa for over 90 years

Exploration Questions:

• Look at your local community. What are some health-related challenges that they face?
• What are some of the challenges you can think of that relate to providing health care services to different groups of people?