Low-Cost, Life-Saving Infant Breathing Device for the Developing World

Respiratory distress claims the lives of about one million African newborns each year. A low-cost device invented by Rice University bioengineering students to help premature babies breathe more easily will be rolled out to teaching hospitals in three African nations, thanks to a $400,000 innovation award from GlaxoSmithKline and London-based charity Save the Children. The technology is a low-cost version of continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, a standard feature of most neonatal units in the developed world. With a price around $6,000, conventional CPAP machines are too expensive for hospitals in the developing world. The new low-cost device has two main components: one is a flow generator that pumps air through a tube and allows clinicians to add oxygen if needed. The tube goes from the generator to the infant, who breathes through nasal prongs, and then to the second component, a water bottle that serves as a regulator.

Transcript

00:00:01 solving tricky problems requires thinking out of the box or in this case the tank here's the problem this is chikunjetsu born two months early every breath is a struggle he needs a few weeks of help to fill his lungs otherwise like countless other african babies born prematurely or with acute lung

00:00:24 infections he's likely to die a cpap or continuous positive airway pressure machine standard equipment in the us would help the problem is the six thousand dollar price tag is beyond the reach of african hospitals a visiting group of medical engineering students from rice university in texas solved the puzzle the answer was just

00:00:50 outside the tank the aquarium pump we were thinking out of the box just looking at different off-the-shelf pumps we were looking at computer fans and we found that aquarium pumps were actually perfect for this kind of application because they're not only low-cost and easy to repair

00:01:07 but they provided the exact air flow that we needed for the cpap device take two aquarium pumps lots of tubes put it inside a metal box easily made in africa a bottle of water to regulate the pressure of the air in the oxygen and you have the pimani bubbles cpap which costs not six thousand dollars but 300

00:01:31 and it works in malawi they found for premature babies cpap cut the number of deaths by more than half so the machine is now being rolled out to hospitals across the region chikonjetsu spent three weeks on cpap six months later and he's a healthy and curious baby all thanks to someone thinking outside the box

00:01:57 or in this case the tank