The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the critical importance and inequities in accessing life-saving medical oxygen. Millions of people, particularly newborns, in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) or low-resource settings, faced a medical oxygen shortage or lacked access entirely. Over the long term, only one in five children in these regions has access to oxygen, despite its critical importance. These low access rates, exacerbated by the oxygen cylinders shortage, fall short of WHO recommendations. As a result, over 700,000 children die annually from pneumonia, according to UNICEF. To address the shortage of oxygen cylinders, oxygen concentrators became a preferred option for donation. These devices, roughly the size of cabin luggage, convert room air into medical-grade oxygen. While they seemed an ideal alternative, challenges such as inconsistent power quality, humidity-related issues with the oxygen-producing filters, and excessive dust contributed to high equipment failure rates in low-resource settings.

Such a systemic problem can’t be solved with an approach just targeting one actor, or one part of the system, so DT Global, across its UK and East Africa offices, is using a “CoLab” approach for the programme which combines two key areas:

The “Co”, Collaboration to convene the right partners and make a better future a reality by:

• Bringing together groups that have influence, expertise, funding, and other essential contributions
• Creating an environment in which they can interact, learn from one another and accelerate change.

The “Lab” by testing our assumptions and generating evidence to we can all learn from:

• Testing new approaches and ideas are through focused experimentation cycles, to find what works.
• Sharing the learning with the world to unlock future progress.

Using this approach at a global level, a national level (particularly in Kenya and Uganda) and a local level allows us to bring together key expertise and key learning that can help us really make a change in the oxygen space.

The main goal of the Oxygen CoLab is to contribute to accelerated and sustained access to fit-for-purpose oxygen concentrators in underserved health centres and hospitals. To achieve this, we are working across three key pillars: accelerating oxygen product innovation, catalyzing market traction, and enabling a collective response.

Building on the success of our Phase One programme where we:

• Started to work on the problem with typically isolated oxygen actors by engaging with over 100 oxygen experts, running six global workshops, and providing networked learning with 20 innovators.
• Started the testing of innovative business models for oxygen provision, in the form of Oxygen as a Service (O2aaS), which could enable sustainable and secure access to oxygen in the future.

The second phase of the project, seeks to, among others, achieve the following:

• Continue providing life-saving oxygen in Tanzania and India, in areas where it was previously unavailable.
• Launch our ‘Country CoLabs’ in Kenya and Uganda where we are expanding our work in the countries. We will build on our existing oxygen provision to explore systems interventions we can support to accelerate sustainable oxygen provision.
• Support the roll out of next generation, CoLab-supported concentrators, which UNICEF has purchased through its Advanced Purchase Commitment.

We aim to gather the key evidence needed to support oxygen provision in low resource settings.