I can see a few potential flaws that could have caused them to not get follow up funding (although I am in no way suggesting that they didn't get follow up funding)
1. Cost. People in Africa are poor, so unless these can be produced and sold for pennies a piece, it probably won't take off. Using the 'buy one, donate one' method probably doesn't scale enough to solve the malaria problem.
2. Behavior. Condoms are a fairly effective method to practice safe sex, and despite a massive amount of money and education, adoption has been slow, or non-existent in Africa. I can see similar issues with Kite.
3. Effectiveness - While they may work, they may not have been shown to be effective enough to warrant further funding.
4. For-profit? I can't seem to find anything on the companies website, but the gates foundation prefers to give their money to non-profits. If they are a for-profit company, I could see reluctance on the foundations part to continue providing funds.
On a personal note, this seems like a cool product that I would use when camping/hiking. But for some of the reasons mentioned above, I would be skeptical to declare this as the solution to malaria in third-world countries, not that I would mind to be proven wrong. I wish them the best of luck.
Comments
I can see a few potential flaws that could have caused them to not get follow up funding (although I am in no way suggesting that they didn't get follow up funding)
1. Cost. People in Africa are poor, so unless these can be produced and sold for pennies a piece, it probably won't take off. Using the 'buy one, donate one' method probably doesn't scale enough to solve the malaria problem. 2. Behavior. Condoms are a fairly effective method to practice safe sex, and despite a massive amount of money and education, adoption has been slow, or non-existent in Africa. I can see similar issues with Kite. 3. Effectiveness - While they may work, they may not have been shown to be effective enough to warrant further funding. 4. For-profit? I can't seem to find anything on the companies website, but the gates foundation prefers to give their money to non-profits. If they are a for-profit company, I could see reluctance on the foundations part to continue providing funds.
On a personal note, this seems like a cool product that I would use when camping/hiking. But for some of the reasons mentioned above, I would be skeptical to declare this as the solution to malaria in third-world countries, not that I would mind to be proven wrong. I wish them the best of luck.