MrZang, right, received the prize at a ceremony
in Dares Salaam, Tanzania
|
Cameroonian inventor Arthur Zang has won a
cash prize of £25,000 ($37,000) for his device that does heart examinations.
The Cardiopad is a tablet computer that
takes a reading and sends it to a heart specialist.
It
allows health workers to give heart examinations and send the results to heart
specialists far away.
BBC
Africa's MamadouMoussa Ba says there are just 50 cardiologists in Cameroon,
which has a population of over 20 million people.
MrZang's
invention was awarded the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation by the UK's
Royal Academy of Engineering at a ceremony in the Tanzanian city of Dar es
Salaam.
The
results from his Cardiopad are sent to a cardiologist via a mobile network and
can be interpreted within 20 minutes.
Cardiopads
are distributed to hospitals and clinics in Cameroon free of charge, and
patients pay $29 (£20) yearly subscriptions.
"My
uncle died from a stroke after I had already started working on the Cardiopad
and this gave me extra motivation to see the project through to the end",
MrZang told the BBC earlier this month.
The
device is already being sold in Gabon, India and Nepal.
Last
year's winner of the award was Tanzanian chemical engineer AskwarHilonga who
invented a sand-based water filter that absorbs anything from copper and
fluoride to bacteria.
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