Dear Kid,
The medical profession has a breakthrough! That was the big Ta-Da you heard recently.
Now, it’s nothing really important like fat-burning ice cream or hair color that self-colors roots as they grow in.
This little innovation just keeps people healthy longer and cures things that used to kill people.
The problem has been that people are often not able to take medication for extended periods of time—and many medications have to be taken for (you guessed it) extended periods of time.
‘Frig-zample.
More than 200 million people contract Malaria each year and treatment has to be taken daily for weeks. The problem is that most of the people who have malaria forgot to take up residences in near modern hospitals. So they don’t take their medication on time. Or every day. Or at all. Which means the Malaria sticks around.
Enter the innovation.
It looks like a capsule. But once it’s swallowed and lands in the patient’s tummy, it expands into a star or snowflake type shape. The star dispenses medication on schedule and sticks around until the joints that hold the arms to the center dissolves, and the snowflake melts into pieces which are then pooped out. Along with dead Malaria cells.
So this is pretty cool. Doctors can give a patient just one dose and the pill does the rest of the work—for a long time.
There are lots of applications for this technology. Like improving drug studies because so many “patients in clinical trials have serious medication adherence problems that mislead the clinical studies.” I’d never thought about that. We always assume that drug testing is problem-free (apparently not so much).
As I said, this is pretty cool.
Three cheers for great innovation.
Love, Mom
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