Many thanks to a longtime blog reader who posted this link on Facebook yesterday: http://goo.gl/87YqMr

The link will take you to a BBC News story about how a a graduate from the University of Guelph, Canada, forever changed the lives of rural village dwellers in Cambodia, plagued by anemia.

In the spring of 2008, Christopher Charles moved to rural Cambodia to work on a three month project dealing with anemia, a “huge public health problem” in those rural areas. He ended up staying for 5 years. And, after many failures, he came up with the brilliant “iron fish” idea described in the article.

It worked. After 12 months, almost half the villagers in Dr. Charles’ trial were no longer suffering from anemia.

Such a simple but brilliant solution…

Dr. Charles held this TED talk in 2014: https://goo.gl/uOSuyr Here he tells the full story. Mesmerizing, absolutely mesmerizing.

In short, I very highly recommend both the BBC article and the TED talk, especially for anyone dealing with, or attempting to prevent, anemia.

One of my neighbors is a blacksmith. I’m going to ask him to make an iron fish for me. Why not? Can’t hurt…