About the Authors

Jean Boubour

Contributed equally to this work with: Jean Boubour, Katherine Jenson, Hannah Richter, Josiah Yarbrough, Z. Maria Oden, Douglas A. Schuler

Affiliation Association Soleil-Vapeur, Evreux, France

Katherine Jenson

Contributed equally to this work with: Jean Boubour, Katherine Jenson, Hannah Richter, Josiah Yarbrough, Z. Maria Oden, Douglas A. Schuler

Affiliation Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Hannah Richter

Contributed equally to this work with: Jean Boubour, Katherine Jenson, Hannah Richter, Josiah Yarbrough, Z. Maria Oden, Douglas A. Schuler

Affiliation Brown School of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Josiah Yarbrough

Contributed equally to this work with: Jean Boubour, Katherine Jenson, Hannah Richter, Josiah Yarbrough, Z. Maria Oden, Douglas A. Schuler

Affiliation Brown School of Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Z. Maria Oden

Contributed equally to this work with: Jean Boubour, Katherine Jenson, Hannah Richter, Josiah Yarbrough, Z. Maria Oden, Douglas A. Schuler

Affiliation Brown School of Engineering, Department of Bioengineering and Rice 360 Institute of Global Health, Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Douglas A. Schuler

Contributed equally to this work with: Jean Boubour, Katherine Jenson, Hannah Richter, Josiah Yarbrough, Z. Maria Oden, Douglas A. Schuler

schuler@rice.edu

Affiliation Jones Graduate School of Business and Rice 360 Institute of Global Health, Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have the following interests. This study was partly funded by the Shell Center for Sustainability, Rice University. We received in-kind donations of equipment and testing materials from the following organizations: Getinge USA (biological testing materials), WAFCO (non-electric steam sterilizers), KeySurgical (brushes), Certol (enzymatic and other cleaners), NovoSurgical (medical instruments), Protek Specialty Company, Bellaire, Texas (water pump). Jean Boubour is the founder of the Association Soleil-Vapeur which is a non-profit organization in France that was formed to produce the capteur soleil, a solar-thermal device. The device was created but never commercialized. Only prototypes exist. The authors used one of these prototypes for operating an autoclave (see manuscript, Reference 7) which they deployed as a pilot study in Sierra Leone in 2013. At present, work has been discontinued on that project. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: DS. Performed the experiments: KJ JY. Analyzed the data: DS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JB HR ZMO DS. Wrote the paper: DS ZMO.