Background

Children with cerebral palsy suffer from damage to areas in the brain that control motor function, thus their ability to communicate or feed is often greatly affected. During M-HEAL’s needs assessment trip, we interviewed several families that mentioned difficulty feeding their child and that their child was unable to feed themselves. We also observed mothers feeding their children during therapy sessions, instead of the child working to feed themselves. Improving a child’s ability to self-feed will help to establish their independence and also improve their upper extremity motor function, which will be applicable to other areas of life.

Many of the solutions that already exist are not an adequate solution for children in Bangladesh because they are expensive to purchase and distribute, and are not a sustainable solution for CSF Global. We also expect that the types of devices available in America would not be readily accepted in Bangladesh, where most people do not eat with utensils. We need to keep both cost and cultural sensitivity in mind as we develop our solution.

1 in 4

children with CP will be non-verbal and have a hard time asking for food

1 in 3

children have specific difficulties with speech and language

over 20%

registered children with CP in Bangladesh are severely underweight & have severe stunting

Our Project

Over the past few years, our team has developed various assistive feeding  devices and designed an educational booklet catered towards caregivers of children with cerebral palsy.  After extensive review and feedback from clinics, therapists, and physicians, we traveled to Bangladesh in the Summer of 2024 to test one of our assistive feeding devices, the corrugated plate, and distribute our educational booklet. We conducted a study to determine if our device improved the ability of the child to self-feed over a period of time spent using the device. We received positive results and gained valuable feedback from children with CP and their caregivers on improving our design to finalize our device for their sustained use. We also conducted a brief needs assessment to plan for other assistive devices and solutions that our team can develop in the future.

Team Updates

Last summer, we went to Bangladesh for prototype testing and a needs assessment, which was a fun learning experience for our team. We have received many grants in the past couple of years to continue our prototyping and development of devices for kids with cerebral palsy. We are entering a new stage of our team, where we are focused on new partnerships, devices, and growing our team many different ways.

Our Team