“Patent for humanity” award of 2013 is awarded to “Sustainable Nutrition International mission”(SNI)

Several business incentives and awards have encouraged the technological progress that has reduced the burden of the poor people. Enhanced scope of monetization of the new invention is now attracting the young scholars to participate in the research project for inventing new ideas and process. “World Intellectual Property Organization” (WPO) is now playing an important role to provide latest information on the Intellectual property related issues. “United States Patent and Trademark Office” (USPTO) has taken a bold initiative introducing the award “Patent for Humanity”.

The company, educational Institution and the individual get recognition for inventing new product or system that caters the need of the distressed people. The patent owners have to apply for participating in the competition. The applicant has to mention how they will meet the humanitarian challenge with their unique technology and product. There are four categories in the competition, i.e. Medical Technology, Food & Nutrition, Clean Technology and Information Technology.

In 2013, USPO has awarded the “Patent for humanity” award to “Sustainable Nutrition International for developing supplements that help reduce malnutrition in developing countries” in the category of “Food and Nutrition”. It is the most important award of this year. The invention is a great leap forward to eradicate the poverty of the third world.

A recent survey of “World Food Program” observed that there are about 870 millions of people of the universe are undernourished. That means one eighth population of the world are not getting required food and nutrient. Food and nutritional insecurity are the main cause of socioeconomic decline, low productivity and increasing health care costs. If a child suffers from malnutrition, he will not be able to concentrate on the education due to illness of lethargy. The number of school dropouts will be increased day by day. Lack of educated people will be an obstacle to the development of the country. That means food insecurity is a great financial burden to the society. Therefore, food and nutrition security is a great tool for social and economic development.

Considering the above facts and figures, the various working groups have observed that the patent of “The Sustainable Nutrition International mission” (SNI) will provide an effective direction to bring sustainable nutrition to chronically malnourished populations. Now, we will discuss the process developed by SNI mission.

The outer layer of rice is known as rice bran. The 100 gm rice bran contains 11.3 to 14.9 gm crude protein, 34-62 gm of carbohydrates and 15-19gm of fat. SNI has achieved the technology to extract the above-mentioned bioactive nutritional components from rice bran. If these nutritional ingredients are mixed with the common foods, the nutritional values of the functional foods will be enhanced. The process will reduce the problem of malnutrition substantially.

SNI mission started a pilot project with the collaboration of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras government to determine the nutritional potency of rice band extract. The project was conducted among 67,000 school-age (ages 6-10) children across 76 school districts in Guatemala, 35,000 school-age children in 174 primary schools in El Salvador and among 1500 lactating mothers across the region. At the end of the first year, the program showed that the malnutrition was reduced 46%. The result was very much encouraging.

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