Uganda

We choose ... to design surgical tools for low-resource settings A pediatric surgeon with a knack for innovation, Tamara Fitzgerald, M.D., Ph.D., works to create surgical tools that are designed to be built and used in low-resource settings. For the past seven years, her team, including students from Duke and Uganda’s Makerere University, has refined the KeyScope, a flexible laparoscope that could make pediatric abdominal surgeries easier in places like Uganda. This year, the project’s manufacturing partner, ShiShi International, became the first Ugandan company to be registered with the Health Industry Business Communications Council, bringing the KeyScope a critical step closer to clinical use. But Fitzgerald’s aims go beyond just one device. “It is about increasing capacity in Uganda for medical device development,” she says. I don’t try to change…