A Presentation High School senior has an innovative idea to help families who have limited access to medical care. Nishi Dharia, a Milpitas resident, has created a low-cost neonatal incubator.
At a Sept. 30 demonstration of the Impact Incubator at the Presentation campus in Willow Glen, Nishi said hospital incubators can cost several thousand dollars, which may be beyond the means of rural medical facilities.
Nishi was born in India, where she saw that those in rural areas had limited access to good medical care and that economic hardship was a fact of life. That led her to design the Impact Incubator for her eighth-grade Science Fair project.
The foldable neonatal incubator is made of water-resistant material. They include mosquito nets since in tropical regions, mosquito-borne diseases are rampant.
The “Impact Incubator” uses paraffin wax pouches as a heat source.
“One pouch has to be placed on the baby’s stomach, and another on its back,” Nishi said.
As a sophomore at Presentation, Nishi heard about the birth of her cousin’s premature baby in India. While the baby was fortunate enough to be born in a hospital that had an incubator, the milestone renewed Nishi’s desire to help those without access to incubators in India.
Over the summer, she visited India and donated incubators to a hospital outside Bangalore serving rural residents. To date 125 incubators have been distributed free of charge to families and doctors living in rural areas of India, including the states of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat. By early next year, Nishi hopes to have distributed 500 incubators, expanding her reach throughout India and into other countries like Bangladesh.
“Premature babies need access to health care,” Nishi said. “We have it here; they deserve it as well.”
Nishi founded a nonprofit to help produce and distribute more Impact Incubators. Fashion design is a hobby of hers, and she has been creating accessories to sell online to raise funds for her nonprofit.
For more information, visit http://www.impactincubators.com/contact.html.