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.
Fitzgerald’s projects in Uganda have been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, and the future of that funding remains unclear. But despite what Fitzgerald describes as “substantial challenges,” the work is continuing. The team has been able to patch some gaps with an award from the Wellcome Trust’s SAVE program, which funds innovations that expand access to surgery in low- and middle-income countries. But bigger commitments will be necessary to prevent the 1.5 million deaths that occur globally each year due to a lack of access to essential surgeries in low-resource settings.
“I think the global health community is already working hard [to ensure projects like this continue],” Fitzgerald says of the current funding challenges. “We need the support of those outside the community to advocate for global initiatives.”
Read more about the KeyScope project in this story from October 2024, which originally appeared in DukeMag, Duke’s alumni magazine.