For 14-years, Laura was a well-respected obstetrician in Berkeley, CA when a back injury ended her practice.

But while then studying for a PhD in Public Health at UC Berkeley, she went to Nigeria to find out why Nigerian women in childbirth are 70-times more likely to die, than U.S. women.

What she discovered was amazing.

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In the industrial world, we take electricity for granted, but in Nigeria, electricity can be unreliable or in many villages, unavailable.

Village women were often giving birth in the dark, for there was no electricity for lights, or for other vital equipment such as monitors and delivery machinery.

To solve this problem, Laura's husband Hal Aronson a "solar guy," created a portable solar suitcase that captures the sun's energy to power lights and equipment.

Photo: expression.edu

And he designed it to be rugged, and run for 70,000 hours, which will let it last 10 to 20-years, depending upon frequency of use.

When Laura and her small team took the first solar suitcase to Nigeria and taught the local people how to use it, the lifesaving began.

Laura and Hal built more solar suitcases in their home and she and her team delivered them to Nigerian villages, and taught the doctors and midwives how to use them.

One day Laura received a message from a Nigerian doctor who told her, not only had a mother and her twins been saved, but the next day, an outbreak of cholera struck. and the solar suitcase's lifesaving features were again put to work.

122-people had cholera and in the past, without a solar suitcase, half would have died. This time, everyone lived.

Determined to quickly build many more solar suitcases,, Laura and Hal created the nonprofit, 501 (c) (3) We Care Solar organization and began fundraising.

After receiving a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, manufacturing moved from their home into professional production.

Today, there are about 2,400-solar suitcases in Africa, India, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Haiti, and in other nations serving an estimated 80,000 mothers a year.

If you would like to see We Care Solar in action, please click on http://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2013/02/28/cnnheroes-stachel.cnn

Editor's Note:

To learn more, https://wecaresolar.org/, https://www.facebook.com/WeCareSolar/ and here. To see another compelling video http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=6080.

In case you are curious, each Solar Suitcase weighs 30-pounds.

Thank you to Robin Wolaner, COO of We Care Solar for assisting us in telling this story.

In the next KazanToday: How a tragedy led a woman to become a mother to 800-unwanted girls.