What role for nano in healthcare for developing nations?

By Jason Major

Technyou

The news web site SciDev Net has collated a series of news, feature and opinion articles investigating the potential of nanotechnology to improve health care in developing nations.

Some of the questions raised and explored include the following:

Is nanotechnology an unrealistic investment for these countries?

Will it be affordable?

Is there a lack of information on what nanotechnology can do for healthcare in developing countries?

Should governments and the private sector fund nanotechnology research in these countries?

What are the risks and what policies would ensure the best use of an expensive technology?

And what specific areas relevant to health needs should be prioritised?

Looking past the techno fix

All the articles are worth a read, but will I draw your attention to one article contributed by Donald Maclurcan, an honorary research fellow with the Institute for Nanoscale Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Those of you who read my recent post critiquing the Friends of the Earth report on nanotech in which I emphasised the need for greater integration between the techno-fix of the science and the socio/political/cultural….etc aspects of our world.

Maclurcan explores just this concept, stating that if nanotechnology is going to have any value in a role to improve health in developing nations it will require more than technological ‘fixes’.  “We also need awareness of the gender, geographic, cultural, societal, philosophical and religious biases that are built in to technologies throughout the various phases of R&D,” he says.

Patients at Uganda clinic

Image: Flickr/US Army africa