Access to electricity is critical for delivery of health care. Although data reporting has been poor, studies have shown that there is only around 28% of health facilities in Sub-Saharan Africa with reliable access to electricity, with only around 25% having no access to electricity [1]. One important consequence is that lack of access to power and poor transportation infrastructure can lead to health facilities having a lack of access to oxygen and unable to produce it reliably. Oxygen is used to treat treating acute respiratory illness and has been shown to reduce mortality and improve patient outcomes [2] and Oxygen Concentrators are a cost effective way to produce oxygen in health facilities, but many existing designs are not optimised for low resource settings.
This project, being co-ordinated by enaccess, is developing an appropriate Open Source Oxygen Concentrator suitable for manufacture and use in Low Resource Settings. The project is driven by nurses, doctors and practitioners who work in these contexts.
An Oxygen concentrator is a, normally electrically powered, device, which concentrates oxygen from ambient air, removing the nitrogen. The most commonly used technology used is know as pressure-swing-adsorbtion (PSA). One of the major challenges to running an Oxygen Concentrator in LRS is that most Oxygen Concentrators require uninterrupted reliable access to electricity.
The project’s main objective is the development of an Open Source Oxygen Concentrator design that meets WHO guidelines. The design should be:
- Safe and Easy to use by Health professionals in LRS.
- Reliable and easy to maintain.
- Able to work with as wide range of power source inputs as possible including solar, wind and existing power generators or not even require an electrical power source (e.g. run directly from wind or hydro power).
- Designed to use commonly available components and fittings available in the supply chains of most LRS.
- Easy to assemble and possible to produced in country as far as possible.
- Ideally be modular and expandable, making it possible to easily size the system to produce enough oxygen required by different health facilities.
All documentation will be in the "docs" directory and be viewed at https://enaccess.github.io/OpenO2. This will includes a detailed specification document on the requirements of the system in line with WHO guidelines and developed in collaboration with medical experts. As the project develops it will include comprehensive documentation on the design. If you find any problems in the docs, or think they should be clarified in any way, please take 30 seconds to raise a ticket and if you can, get involved.
Do you have skills or resources you would be able to offer? We'd love to hear from people with frontline experience in the Global South as doctors and nurses, doctors and nurses who would be willing to act as advisers to the project, designers, makers, creative thinkers, engineers, people with 3D cad experience, people who can help manage knowledge and documentation, scientists, fabricators, people with experience of microcontrollers (think arduino) and writing ble mobile applications.
This project does not seek to duplicate work of other open source oxygen concentrator designs, but rather contribute towards these projects while assembling and, where necessary making resources relevant to low resource settings, which is our particular focus. To achieve this we are collaborating with medics in these environments as well as those who have extensive experience of working in these settings to get input and feedback. Simultaneously we are developing partnerships to coordinate manufacture and logistics in the developing world, beginning in Tanzania.
- https://github.com/RepRapLtd/Oxygen-concentrator
- https://github.com/oxycon/ProjectApollo
- https://hackaday.io/project/170752-oximeter-do-it-yourself/details
- https://github.com/PubInv/oxygen-concentrator
The public roadmap for the project is here: https://github.com/EnAccess/OpenO2/projects/1
Please join our slack channel, get involved and contribute :-)
- Limited electricity access in health facilities of sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review of data on electricity access, sources, and reliability, Adair-Rohani et al., Glob Health Sci Pract. 2013 Aug; 1(2): 249–261, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4168575/
- Oxygen is an essential medicine: a call for international action, Duke et al., Int J Tuberc Lung Dis. 2010 Nov; 14(11): 1362–1368, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2975100/
- Oxygen sources and distribution for COVID-19 treatment centres, WHO, Interim guidance, 4th April 2020
We are continuing to bring together organisations to work on OpenO2. Please let us know if you are keen to be involved!
