Empowering Health Workers

Dongobesh, a small rural village in Mbulu district Tanzania. 

The prosperity of the communities which we work with have been adversely affected by limited access to basic social services like education and health. In resource-poor settings decision-makers find it difficult to justify expenses for new preventive health-care interventions. And the burden of out-of-pocket expenses imposes a large barrier to access to health care for these poor populations. 

As in most LMICs, the conventional method of supply of medical oxygen in Tanzania is a pressurised oxygen cylinder. However, these come with many disadvantages with high cost, logistical problems with delivery, and leakage. Many have proposed the use of small domestic oxygen concentrators, but have witnessed very poor long-term performance in the field. 

By carefully studying the failure modes of other devices in the field, FREO2 has developed affordable and appropriate technical solutions, which dramatically increased the lifetime performance of oxygen concentrators in the field. 

Tanzania has a large young population (30%). Despite the numerical strength of the youth, they continue to lead marginal lives, further complicated by unemployment. It is claimed by some that they lack useful skills for a better life. We disagree. The young people we have worked with are as creative as our western colleagues, and in many cases more so. What is lacking is opportunity and support. 

In 2018, we established our first FREO2 mission in Dongobesh. Our technicians, Babu and Damiano are locally trained experts in servicing and maintaining the FREO2 oxygen systems. Together, they ensure that the Dongobesh and Bashanet hospital systems, which they installed, are kept in top working order.  Their mission is to ensure that the oxygen is always available.  Key to delivering this is the unit exchange program as the service model for the support businesses - faulty units are immediately swapped with refurbished ones. This allows minimal down time for health facilities and the ability to share tools and resources at a central local. With this approach, both facilities have dramatically reduced their needs to expensive oxygen cylinders, whilst maintaining constant availability of oxygen.

With FREO2 OxyLInk, we have established a successful local enterprise which is providing health centres with affordable oxygen. Families are now able to secure treatment within their own community and avoid the costly journey to a larger city.