And the winner of our India Prize contest is…

Image courtesy of The Straits Times, photo By Rachel Tan

We are delighted to announce the winner of our global India Prize contest: X-Dengue, an initiative from Singapore, was selected from among the different entries and will receive $10,000 for their project. X-Dengue, which came into being after one of the co-founders caught dengue in 2011, is based on the idea that governments spend a lot of effort on gathering information on fresh outbreaks and dengue clusters, but that this information does not always reach people in time. The initiative therefore allowed people to register their preferred locations and to be notified of new dengue cases through a free-of-charge text message service. X-Dengue collaborated with the National Environment Agency in Singapore and now has thousands of registered users. The real-time notifications allow people to take additional precautions if they live near an affected area. The prize money will make it possible for X-Dengue to help build a similar system in India, where the number of cases has been on the rise. We are excited to see what impact this will have in India, where we are working to raise awareness of the disease. Congratulations to the winner!