The first UNICEF Oxygen Plant-in-a-Box is on its way to Uganda to aid in the response to COVID-19

08

Oct

Prakshi Rawat

In response to COVID-19, UNICEF has created an innovative Oxygen Plant-in-a-Box package to assist nations in massively growing their oxygen-producing capacity in health care facilities clinics.

For people with severe COVID-19, having access to oxygen can mean the difference between life and death. It's also a savior for many of the 30 million small and unwell newborns born each and every year, as well as children with severe pneumonia, the greatest infectious mortality of children under the age of five.

The COVID-19 pandemic, on the other hand, has aggravated an existing oxygen shortage in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs): 1.5 million COVID-19 patients in LMICs require respiratory support on a daily basis. Even before the pandemic, too many people who sorely needed this soul medicinal gas would be unable to obtain it.

In the context of COVID-19, new solutions are needed

In response, UNICEF teams partnered with industry to develop the Oxygen Plant-in-a-Box package, an innovative emergency solution.

Everything necessary to make high volumes of durable oxygen for patients is included in the completely operational oxygen plants package, including right accessories in the right amounts, high - functioning, and pre-planned maintenance services.

The plant packages are created to support a medium to large local clinic and can be fully operational in a matter of days. Each plant can create up to 7,20,000 litres of oxygen per day, enough to meet the oxygen needs of roughly 50-60 COVID-19 patients or more than 100 children with severe pneumonia all around the clock.

“Oxygen liquid plants are complicated commodities that can take six months or longer to design and order,” according to Kristoffer Gandrup-Marino, UNICEF Supply Division's Chief of Innovative Products. That's why we created this solution. Pre-designed plants reduce the cost of these products and to let them all reach the country far more swiftly, allowing to save more lives at this vital moment."

“The Oxygen Plant-in-a-Box will play a significant role in increasing access to medical oxygen for COVID-19 patients as well as young kids with severe pneumonia – a disease that kills a child every 39 seconds despite being preventable and curable,” said Kristoffer Gandrup-Marino, UNICEF Supply Division Chief of Product Innovation.

Uganda will get the first UNICEF Plant-in-a-Box

UNICEF Uganda has placed orders for the first four Oxygen Plant-in-a-Box packages, which will be sent to health care facilities around the nation, including Masaka, Kabale, and Jinja.

The overwhelming number of COVID-19 patients in need of oxygen therapy has greatly surpassed available capabilities at many clinics in Uganda, as it has in most of the world.

“COVID-19 has put strain on Ugandan health care institutions, especially in terms of oxygen production capacity. Without sufficient oxygen plant suppliers, we know COVID-19 patients who can be saved are not surviving,” said Laura Siegrist Fouché, UNICEF Uganda's Deputy Coordinator for Operations.

“In recent weeks, even big health systems have struggled to deliver enough oxygen. Many people were reported as needing to be taken off sufficient oxygen for scarce oxygen supply to be provided to patients in much more serious medical conditions.”

“These oxygen production plants will be essential in aiding the government in meeting COVID-19's oxygen needs, with the country requiring an estimated 1.8 million cylinders of oxygen each and every day. We believe they will be capable of integrating into the health systems for many years to provide medical services for kids with pneumonia, preterm infants, and surgical patients, potentially saving thousands of lives.”

Contributions to UNICEF's ACT-A Products Financing Facility (ACT-A SFF), a pooled fund that assists low- and middle-income states obtain COVID-19 health supplies, were also used to help subsidize the plants.

Other nations are likely to order so many plants in the coming months, with the ACT-A SFF continuing to advocate for fair access to COVID-19 supplies, especially oxygen.

Increasing oxygen availability

Since the onset of the pandemic, UNICEF has been seeking to enhance supply of oxygen in a variety of contexts UNICEF has shipped over 30,000 oxygen concentrators, is helping countries in reinforcing and planning domestic oxygen systems, and, with the Oxygen Plant-in-a-Box, is now able to provide quality service for delivering oxygen at medium-sized health care facilities which is both quick to give and easy to manage.

The Oxygen-Plant-in-a-Box from UNICEF

The UNICEF Oxygen-Plant-in-a-Box has been improved to make it more durable, capable of operating in extreme heat and altitudes and resistant to voltage fluctuations. In the event of an electrical power outage or failure, plants also store a backup amount of air in huge cylinders, helping patients continue to get life-saving therapy.

If no interior room is available, the plant can indeed be or before within a cargo container. This is thought to be useful in conflict situations where building a plant site was too expensive.

Should a health agency's pipeline system be present or be needed in the future, all UNICEF Oxygen Plant-in-a-Box kits can be linked into it. As a result, the factory is future-proofed to be a long-term solution, assisting in the acceptance of oxygen treatments as a standard aspect of medicine.

This breakthrough technology has the capacity to save millions of lives and help countries ‘continue building better' after the pandemic, with air being a vital treatment for COVID-19, but also children with influenza, women with supply disruptions and ill infants.