Monrovia – Leisurely one night time, 44-one year-vulnerable Irene Mabande’s four-one year-vulnerable daughter Emerald suffered a extreme asthma attack at dwelling in Tubmanburg, the capital of Bomi County within the northwest of Liberia. “She changed into striving for air. She couldn’t breathe on her procure,” Mabande recalls. “Within the clinic, they don’t bear a nebulizer for asthmatic sufferers, so the smartest thing that will perhaps well well bring her assist changed into oxygen.”
Legitimate access to medical oxygen is a wanted part of a sturdy health system, a lifestyles-saving wanted remedy that supports essential medical interventions and helps to be definite efficient responses to a huge fluctuate of health challenges. Nonetheless, an absence of uninterrupted access to oxygen in Liberia has contributed to preventable deaths, a field amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, when place a question to for medical oxygen surpassed the country’s capability.
“This changed into a major gap in our response to the pandemic,” says Dr Adolfos T. Yeaih, Director of Emergency Response Products and services at Liberia’s Ministry of Health. “And the exiguous oxygen that lets scheme from business sources did no longer bear the originate of purity that changed into required to take care of of us adequately.”
In a exclaim to take care of this deficit, in 2022, local health authorities, with funding from the European Union, USAID and the German authorities, and support from World Health Organization (WHO), established two fresh cutting-edge stress swing adsorption (PSA) oxygen crops. One plant is at the Megastar Execrable on Bushrod Island in Monrovia, and the opposite at Liberia Government Clinic in Bomi County.
Recognizing the importance of uninterrupted energy for satisfactory, constant oxygen manufacturing, WHO also procured and installed backup generators for the fresh crops, supplied diesel gas for their operation, and facilitated the connection of the Megastar Execrable plant to the national grid to extra support its reliability.
These crops bear been established to complement three pre-new on-plot medical oxygen crops in Liberia, most productive one in all which supplies oxygen to other health services and products. In distinction, the fresh crops distribute oxygen cylinders to health services and products throughout five counties, serving a population of roughly 2.3 million of us. From April 2023 to June 2024, they produced and disbursed a total of 4551 cylinders, delivering wanted support to over 2000 seriously ill sufferers.
Mabande’s daughter changed into one in all the beneficiaries of this well-known intervention, which has considered the proportion of health centres and hospitals offering medical oxygen nationwide amplify from 51% in 2021 to 67% in 2023. “As quickly as they established the oxygen, she began taking breaths, and she or he changed into stabilized,” Mabande says. “She got right here assist.”
Sylvester Tolgai is a nurse anaesthetist at Liberia Government Clinic, the attach till recently this originate of sure consequence changed into all too frequently no longer the case. “Oxygen supply changed into a proper field internal this clinic,” he says. “The institution of the oxygen plant has been a noteworthy assist for us. It has helped us to slash the mortality price at the clinic. It’s far a genuinely ethical initiative for us and our sufferers.”
As phase of a total roadmap to preserve scaling up access to medical oxygen throughout all 15 of Liberia’s counties, WHO has also supported the Ministry of Health in training over 200 clinicians on oxygen remedy. Twenty biomedical engineering technicians bear also received abilities within the safe operation and upkeep of the fresh oxygen crops, while a dedicated training centre changed into established at the Megastar Execrable plant for ongoing capability constructing.
The roadmap also seeks to repair damage to new PSA crops, increase emergency preparedness and essential care supply, install medical gas piping in all main referral hospitals throughout Liberia, and equip ambulances with satisfactory oxygen supply and developed lifestyles support points.
“Liberia has made essential strides towards making sure access to medical grade oxygen for all,” says Dr Clement Peter, WHO Advisor in Liberia. “As COVID-19 highlighted, medical oxygen may perhaps perhaps well also moreover be the distinction between lifestyles and death and the country needs to be commended for making this a precedence in its pursuit of fashioned health protection.”
Assist in Tubmanburg, 39-one year-vulnerable Hawa Morris plays with her 18-month-vulnerable daughter Princess begin air her dwelling. Last one year, Princess changed into admitted to Liberia Government Clinic with extreme bacterial an infection. “With out the oxygen, she would no longer be right here today,” Morris says. “I am so grateful.”
