The Safe Bottle Lamp Foundation
The Safe Bottle Lamp: A Life-Saving Invention by Dr. Wijaya Godakumbura
As a surgeon, Dr. Wijaya Godakumbura many tragic fire cases caused by kerosene lamps. There are over 1 million households in Sri Lanka without access to electricity, which means they have to rely on kerosene lamps for lighting - often improvised ones Lamps, which are made from bottles. These tall lamps tend to tip over easily, and when this happens, the wick holder often falls out, starting a sudden, violent fire. Often the flammable kerosene gets onto a nearby person who bursts into flames and suffers severe burns, which are often fatal.
In 1992, Dr. Godakumbura is thinking of a new one lamp to design something that would be both safer and cheap enough to be affordable by the poverty-stricken Sri Lankans who were at risk of such fires. The resulting lamp is a small, flat ball that doesn't tip over or slip easily. It's made of thick glass to prevent breakages and has a screw-on metal lid that holds the wick in place and prevents spills.
In 1993, thanks to contributions from various sources including science fiction author and Sri Lankan resident Arthur C. Clarke and the Canadian High Commission, the lamp was put into production.
Available for less than 25 US cents each, over half a million of these new lamps have already been sold. Dr. Godakumbura hopes to continue production of the new lamps until the use of improvised lamps in Sri Lanka is reduced to a small percentage.
The Foundation
In 1998, Dr. Godakumbura received the Rolex Award for Enterprise and then founded the Safe Bottle Lamp Foundation (SBLF), a non-profit organization. The foundation is governed by a board of directors and employs two full-time staff members.
In addition to the Rolex Award, the foundation and Dr. Godakumbura a number of other local and international awards and grants. These include a Lindbergh Foundation Grant and a BBC World Challenge Award. The project has been featured in many international publications such as TIME, Newsweek, Science and Nature, National Geographic and La Figaro.
Dr. Godakumbura has represented the Foundation as a speaker or participant at many international burn and accident prevention conferences. The Foundation and the Sudeepa Lamp were presented as a replicable solution for other developing countries where burns from unsafe lamps are widespread.
Source: Wikipedia