Phototherapy beds and incubators for Africa

Africa as a whole and Nigeria in particular suffer from several distressing conditions such as high poverty rates, insecurity, poor healthcare facilities, lack of basic amenities such as electricity, potable water supplies, decent human and industrial waste management facilities as well as good access road networks.

Worst affected are communities residing in rural Africa. Its a pity that despite huge humanitarian assistance from world health organisations and other donor countries, people in rural Africa are still wallowing in distressing conditions occasioned by poor governmental implementation of donor guidelines as well as corruption.

Suffix it to say that rural communities in Africa, Nigeria inclusive, keep witnessing increases in maternal and neonatal deaths instead of decreases. Because of lack of basic medical equipment such as incubators and phototherapy beds, neonatal deaths keep occurring from treatable diseases and conditions such as neonatal jaundice, neonatal sepsis, neonatal malaria and preterm deliveries.

We are trying to solve the challenges of absent or poor healthcare facilities in Nigeria as well as rural Africa in general. We are interested in fabricating and manufacturing locally assembled phototherapy beds and incubators which utilise solar energy for their functions as well as the training of local artisans and welders as well as electricians on how to locally fabricate and assemble medical devices that will utilise only solar energy for their functions. This is to enable them provide these local devices as at where they are needed at cheap costs, without waiting for costly imported ones or for government interventions that may never materialise.

Our solutions include the fabrication and assembling of local phototherapy beds and incubators with solar powered chargers. We intend to work with local fabrication teams and artisans using local hardware and locally sourced materials in order to keep the costs of production low and for easy accessibility to rural areas where they are desperately needed.

Rural communities in Nigeria and Africa as a whole, often lack basic medical equipment such as incubators and phototherapy beds which are very important in the management of prematurely born, preterm infants or infants suffering from neonatal jaundice at birth or has low birth weights.

We have managed to fabricate prototypes of locally made phototherapy beds and incubators and are currently trying to link them to solar batteries which could be used to power the machines, bearing in mind the poor epileptic power supplies in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. The importance of phototherapy beds and incubators in neonatal care is universally acclaimed; but it is a pity that as large as Africa is and Nigeria as a whole, thousands, if not millions of rural dwellers, do not have access to quality health care facilities in their communities. These are due to poor government policies, corruption as well as high level of insecurity witnessed in these rural areas. High rates of neonatal, infant and maternal mortalities occur in very large proportions in these regions and it has become imperative that direct interventions be made available to the communities without waiting for government programmes which often times, do not materialise.

We at Winniella’s Clinic and Scan centre thus deemed it highly necessary to seek for ways we can directly assist these communities at very low costs, hence the idea of locally fabricating incubators and phototherapy beds which would be powered by solar energy and which we will personally deliver to rural communities all over Nigeria, as well as all over Africa if possible, in order to assist in providing affordable neonatal care within the communities thereby assisting in reducing neonatal mortality.

Our target population include the millions of people living in rural communities in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. In these rural communities, including the riverine communities in Nigeria and Africa, most of them have no access to quality health care. Most of these communities do not have health centres or have poorly equipped and poorly financed ones, hence they are prone to suffering from high maternal and infant mortality rates, especially neonatal deaths. Cases where children are born preterm or with neonatal diseases such as neonatal jaundice, neonatal sepsis and neonatal malaria, because of lack of functional incubators and phototherapy beds as well as medications, always leads to poor neonatal management which often ends in high rates of neonatal deaths. 

Our intended solutions include forming a technical team with local technicians and artisans in these rural communities to help us fabricate local incubators and phototherapy beds which we will power using solar energy gotten from locally fabricated panels and ensuring the training of the local healthcare personnel on the efficient usage of these incubators and phototherapy beds in the management of these neonatal conditions when they arise; which is often, because of the burden of heavy malaria parasitism in Africa as well as poverty, poor feeding and poor nutrition of the mothers as well as poor obstetric care seen in rural areas of Nigeria and Africa as a whole. We intend to try and assist rural healthcare providers in being able to manage neonatal diseases using our local incubators and phototherapy beds in order to drastically reduce neonatal deaths in these regions.

So far, I and my team have managed to assembly about ten (five each) of these local incubators and phototherapy beds which we have successfully used in managing neonates born in our clinic and a friend's facility. My team comprises of two Medical doctors, one Mechanical Engineer, one Electrical Engineer, two electricians, two welders, one glass fabricator and three nurses.  We had the challenge of directly powering our phototherapy beds and incubators with solar energy using solar bulbs and panels; a condition that is making us to seek for partnership with organisations that could help us with finance, in order to enable us conquer and overcome this challenge.

We are currently serving a few people in our two clinics ( mine and a friend's) located in the outskirts of town in semi-rural communities of PortHarcourt.

We really need financial assistance from solve to be able to develop our incubators and phototherapy beds up to standards and in large scale quantities, where we can then transport and supply them to rural health centres free of charge, to help them enhance their neonatal care services. We also require assistance to be able to train local artisans on how to easily and safely fabricate more of these equipment in their local enclaves as well as maintain them when they develop faults. We also require funds for installation of solar power charges on the equipment. This is because of poor electricity supply in our rural communities which tends to hinder the use of these equipment even when they are available.

Poverty in Africa and poor government interventions has reduced the purchasing power of Healthcare providers,  especially those in the rural areas, who have to rely on personal financing or loans to be able to obtain very essential medical equipment needed to provide essential services, especially essential neonatal care. Nigeria as a country is not exempted. Our locally fabricated phototherapy beds and incubators are designed such that they could be locally assembled and run at minimal costs that can be affordable to all.

Our impact goals for the first year is to be able to provide very functional and easily assembled and managed phototherapy beds and incubators for all the rural healthcare facilities in rural communities of the 774 local government areas in Nigeria.

Our impact goals for the next five years is to be able to extend our services to the whole of sub-saharan Africa. We intend to train fabricators in the whole of Africa and ensure that every rural community in the whole of sub-saharan Africa has at least two to three phototherapy beds and incubators for provision of neonatal care as at when needed with minimal cases of neonatal deaths if possible.

We are measuring our progress by collecting data on the number of lives our products have been able to save thus far in the few areas where our phototherapy beds and incubators are currently being used.

We have recorded a significant reduction in neonatal deaths compared to previous data in the five communities where we succeeded in delivering two each of our phototherapy beds and incubators in the past one year.

The level of neonatal deaths in rural communities in Africa,  Nigeria inclusive, is very high and worrisome. Infants die from treatable illness such as neonatal jaundice, neonatal sepsis, neonatal malaria, etc. It is a pity that despite all the interventions provided by world health organisation and United States Agencies in charge of health services, rural Africa, rural Nigeria inclusive, still lack basic medical equipment needed for enhanced neonatal care and maternal health. Lack of government strong will to better the lives of their rural population has exposed young neonates to early preventable deaths and very poor maternal health. Our short-term goal is to help curb neonatal deaths in rural Nigeria while endeavouring to partner with technological teams that can help us reach as many rural communities in Africa as possible. Our long-term goals are to ensure that neonatal deaths in rural Africa are reduced to the barest minimum especially for babies born preterm or prematurely as well as those suffering from neonatal diseases, especially neonatal jaundice.

We intend to utilise the power of solar energy to sustain our phototherapy beds and incubators especially in rural areas where electricity is non- existent or poor. We intend to harness sunlight generated energy to power our equipment as well as provide cells which can store solar energy for use at sun down or during rainfall.

We are a team made up of people from diverse backgrounds. We all come from different tribes in Nigeria, have different educational backgrounds and skills, are made up of both males and females and interact daily with other people from diverse backgrounds. We do not discriminate based on tribe, sex, gender, sexual orientation or religious backgrounds. We are all joined by one passion; to help alleviate the mental torments suffered by our rural dwellers, occasioned by incessant maternal and neonatal deaths, which are preventable. Our desire is to reach out to every rural communities possible, both in Nigeria and in Africa. We do not want to entangle ourselves with the bureaucracy of government, which most of the times do not favour the indigenes due to corruption on a very large scale and insecurity, rather, we desire to reach out directly to the millions of people residing in these rural areas and bring succour to their health problems, especially those of their infants and newborns.

We are a government registered medical facility that provides direct medical care to our patients. We also provide medical diagnostic services to the public as well as specialist health care services.

Our solve team is a small part of our establishment which is just trying to help provide succour to our local communities through the fabrication and delivery of local phototherapy beds and incubators to the communities free of charge.

Already our clinic and diagnostic centre is self-sustaining. We attend to the paying public from which money is generated to run the clinic and scan centre and pay staff salaries.

However, we intend to run our solve challenge as a not- for-profit organisation. We intend to expand the team to several communities in Africa as a whole starting from Nigeria and would like to reach out to organisations willing to support our initiative by providing financial support to us.

So far, we have just concluded pilot work on a few phototherapy beds and incubators which we are currently using in our clinics as pilot projects and which are still undergoing final modifications, especially with the solar powering.

We are yet to apply for grants from companies and organisations but we intend to commence for funding applications starting with solve MIT.

We have also started sourcing for information on companies and organisations that sponsor causes such as ours.