A team of Canadian university students are prototyping a portable milk pasteurization kit to combat the spread of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in Kenya, an idea that brought them to victory at an international climate competition in March.
The team, composed of students from McMaster University, the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University, competed at Challenge4ClimateAction. The global competition brought together 200 teams from 58 countries to solve a selected problem statement that related to a real-world climate issue.
The winning team, the Golden Marauders, were tasked with finding a solution to mitigate the effects of climate change on developing countries and decided to focus on MERS in Kenya.
Miraal Kabir, a Golden Marauders member and second-year student completing double degrees in business and computer science at Laurier and Waterloo, said increasing droughts have led Kenyan farmers to rely on camels for milk because they can withstand the intense temperatures.
However, Kabir said that because camels carry MERS, Kenyan farmers are at risk of contracting the illness, which has a 35 per cent mortality rate—a significantly higher rate than COVID-19.
“As we’ve seen with COVID, if it’s a really contagious variant they get, it could turn into a global pandemic,” Kabir said. “There’s no scientific way to extract MERS, so the best way is to remove any pathogens from the milk, which you can with pasteurization.”
The kit combines a thermometer, an extendable handle and a whisk to even out heat distribution and can be attached to any pot. The kit is also fully mechanical, meaning users can pasteurize milk even if a facility is far away. The team named the product ‘Safi,’ the Swahili word for ‘pure.’
Martin Turuta, a second-year student and member of the Golden Marauders, is currently double majoring in mathematics at Waterloo and business at Laurier. Turuta said the issue of MERS is often overlooked.
“The components individually aren’t necessarily revolutionary, but what we’re doing is putting together those different components in a way that hasn’t been done before to solve a problem that hasn’t been addressed,” Turuta said.
The team was awarded $6,000 by Convergence.Tech, the host of the competition, to implement their solution. Kabir said the team has put the money into manufacturing the product and is currently looking for extra funding to scale Safi’s production.
In the process of scaling up Safi’s production, the team is examining extra considerations such as how users in Kenya can refrigerate the pasteurized milk and the best method of distributing the product.
Kabir said the team initially wanted to start production in Canada, but is now considering starting production in Kenya due to the environmental cost of shipping.
Kabir also said the team wants to do a test run of Safi in neighbouring Tanzania in partnership with a local non-governmental organization (NGO), the Dare Women’s Foundation. Afterward, Kabir said the team plans to contact NGOs in Kenya.
“We’re going to do a user testing in Tanzania to see how it goes and we’ll improve our product based on that,” Kabir said. “And once we’re sure this is the final product, we’ll send it off to Kenya.”
Turuta said funding Safi will likely be a large obstacle for the team, but expressed optimism for the future.
“We have a group of very smart and driven individuals,” Turuta said. “Everyone on the team is passionate, accountable and serious about what they do. If there’s any team that would be able to solve any obstacles or issues, I think it’s ours.”
Featured image provided by Miraal Kabir. With files from Maria Rosa Duarte.
