SOUTH AFRICA – A group of doctors and engineers have installed an oxygen concentrator that allows Madwaleni District Hospital to generate its own oxygen.

Oxygen production has become an important lifeline at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic for patients admitted there and the surrounding clinics.

The concentrator they installed is a containerized Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) oxygen generator. Per Wikipedia’s description of the process, the PSA is based on the phenomenon that under high pressure, gases tend to be trapped onto solid surfaces, i.e., to be “adsorbed.”

The higher the pressure, the more gas is adsorbed. When the pressure is dropped, the gas is released, or desorbed.

Oxygen shortages were a mainline problem throughout the Covid-19 pandemic in multiple African countries. In Somalia, the World Health Organisation boosted oxygen supplies to hospitals as part of “a strategic roadmap to boost oxygen supply in hospitals across the country.”

Additionally, the high cost of medical oxygen severely impacted patients in Nigeria where its unaffordability resulted in the deaths of many suffering from Covid-19 in hospitals.

Made by a subsequent investigation revealed that Covid-19 complicated the challenges associated with getting medical oxygen.

With financial support from UNITAID, World Health Organization (WHO) has piloted the construction of two medical oxygen production plants in the Democratic Republic of Congo this year.

The plant at the University Clinics of Kinshasa is already producing enough oxygen to fill 88 47.2-litre cylinders every day, more than double the hospital’s typical daily need.

The second plant is set to become operational within the Sino-Congolese Friendship Hospital, which is located to the southeast of Kinshasa, in the coming weeks.

These two establishments were chosen to house the new oxygen production plants because of their status as reference hospitals capable of supplying other secondary health facilities, as well as for their ability to manage severe cases.

At the height of the pandemic, both hospitals hosted dedicated treatment centres for COVID-19 patients. However, demand for quality oxygen for those in critical condition soon exceeded the centres’ capacity.

In anticipation of potential further COVID-19 pandemic waves, work is now underway on a third factory in Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu.

This unit would then be able to provide high-quality medical oxygen to many other medical facilities located in the east of the country, including in the cities of Bukavu, Beni and Butembo, which currently have no such supplies.

Other projects, funded by the World Bank, the International Global Fund and the Clinton Health Access Initiative are underway.

In addition to serving COVID-19 patients, increased efforts by WHO to provide oxygen support in the Democratic Republic of the Congo will also contribute to the treatment of other diseases, leading to a much-needed overall strengthening of local health systems.

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