Great. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.
Truly, one of the learnings was that the concrete examples of simple innovations that are low cost, and that have a big impact, really did resonate with the participants at the conference, and I think they resonated with Canadians.
My favourite scene happened when we were asked to show some of these innovations that are supported by Canada to the secretary-general and to the head of WHO. There were four of them that we took. My favourite picture shows this windup fetal heart monitor, which is like a windup radio. You don't need batteries. You can use it to monitor the state of the fetus during delivery. Dr. Chan, the director-general of WHO, took this out of the hand of the innovator and was sticking it against Ban Ki-moon's heart. There is a wonderful picture, that I tweeted, with Ban Ki-moon laughing and Dr. Chan poking him with this fetal heart monitor.
That's an example of one; it's an innovator at SickKids who is testing that electronic fetal heart monitor.
One of the other ones we had there was the Odon device, which is like a little balloon that goes over the head of the baby to help deliver the baby in the case of a delayed labour. This is a very interesting innovation. It was developed by an Argentinian car mechanic. You might have seen the story on the front page of The New York Times. He was looking at a YouTube video about how to take a wine cork out of a wine bottle. They did it with a balloon. He woke up at night and he said, “Oh, I have an app for that.”
We're very privileged to support it along with our partners; the Gates foundation, USAID, Norway, and the U.K. We supported a proof of concept through WHO and the proof of concept worked. Now, the large Fortune 500 company, Becton Dickinson, which has developed affordable innovations before, such as safety syringes, and put them in the developing world, has picked this up, has invested significantly more funds, and is carrying it forward.
It's a good example of sustainable innovation and public and private finance working together to get these innovations into the field.
In summary, I think I'll pause here to make sure we have enough time, but some examples of innovations, which was your question, include chlorhexidine, the lucky iron fish, the Odon device, and the fetal heart monitor. One of the favourites was iron-fortified tea. The person who did fortified salt is doing a proof of concept, through the saving lives at birth initiative, to try and put iron into tea.
There were a dozen of them. I won't mention them all, but those are four or five. They were very much the focus of everybody. Picture that photograph of Dr. Chan poking the secretary-general with the fetal heart monitor and you'll see the extent to which it was able to engage people. These are simple, affordable innovations with very good impact.
I think that is what is engaging Canadians. It is what engaged the participants at that wonderful summit that we both attended. It really showed Canada's leadership in women and children's health and in innovation.