Frugal innovation ( jugaad) has received a lot of positive publicity in India , especially in the healthcare space . The reality is that doctors have to work under numerous constraints in India, because of very limited budgets and huge clinical workloads. Lots of doctors take pride in developing local clever, inexpensive solutions for dealing with this problem. A lot of these are home-grown , jury-rigged devices , which are low-cost adaptations of products used in the West, but which are too expensive to implement in India.
Let's look at some of the low cost solutions Indian gynecologists have developed. In the West, automated laparoscopic insufflators are used to perform laparoscopic tubal ligations , to help women to limit their family size. These introduce controlled quantities of medical grade carbon dioxide gas into the abdomen, and allow the doctor to visualise what he is doing.…
