Partners In Health (PIH) has announced the launch of an $8 million initiative focused on bringing oxygen to rural, hard-to-reach areas.

Funded by Unitaid, with additional support from Build Health International and PIVOT, the initiative, Building Reliable Integrated and Next Generation Oxygen Services (BRING O2), aims to install or repair 26 “pressure swing adsorption” (PSA) plants in four poor countries where PIH operates. The units, which are roughly the size of a van, employ specialized adsorbent materials, similar to the silica gel packets that come in new sneakers, to continuously extract nitrogen from the air, leaving purified oxygen. A single PSA plant can supply enough oxygen for an entire district hospital. The first two will be installed at Chikwawa District Hospital in Malawi and Butaro District Hospital in Rwanda.

“There are few things more heart-wrenching than watching a patient struggle to breathe,” said PIH associate director and BRING O2 principal investigator Paul Sonenthal. “I have been in hospitals where all the patients sat bolt upright, gasping because the oxygen cylinder ran out. When you can put in a new oxygen cylinder and watch them ease back into bed, that’s a good moment. When you can install a proper oxygen plant so it never happens again, that’s even better, and that’s BRING O2.”

“Medical oxygen shortages around the world have been a tragic feature of the pandemic, impacting the poorest countries disproportionately. Lack of oxygen was a major issue for so many health care systems around the world before the pandemic and COVID-19 significantly exacerbated the problem” said Robert Matiru, director of programs at Unitaid. “Unitaid and PIH are excited by BRING O2 precisely because this gap has been so difficult to fill, for so long.”

(Photo Credit: Getty Images/aydinmutlu)