A simple oxygen device modified by two Brisbane doctors could help save the lives of thousands of children in central Africa.
Professor John Fraser from the Critical Care Research Group has just returned from Uganda where the first stage of a trial is underway aimed at developing a crucial tool in the battle against the potentially lethal effects of pneumonia.
Professor Fraser said his team had just delivered equipment to Uganda which they hoped would make a real difference.
At a hospital in the eastern Ugandan town of Mbale, more patients wait outside than in beds and artificial respirators are a luxury.
“The question really from our point of view was could we take a device that’s been developed for the first world and use it in developing worlds where they don’t get oxygen,” Professor Fraser said.
He and Brisbane colleague Dr Andreas Schibler teamed up with Kenyan-based Professor Kath Maitland to work out a method of adapting a machine, called a hi-flow device, to suit Africa’s harsh conditions.
The machine sucks air through a turbine and pumps it into a patient’s airways to make breathing easier.
Professor Maitland said the machine worked without relying on an artificial oxygen supply.
“Unlike Australia, where if children fail oxygen therapy because they’ve got such bad lung infection they go into an intensive care unit, there simply are no intensive care units in African hospitals,” she said.
“Effectively the child becomes exhausted and then fails and dies.”
In a country where 10 per cent of children hospitalised with pneumonia die, Professor Fraser said the machine could prove crucial.
“[It’s] a little bit like riding a bicycle – rather than cycling uphill the whole time and getting tired every time you take a breath, this extra air will make your breathing a little bit easier, will open your lungs that bit better,” he said.
“Hopefully – we don’t know that answer yet – but hopefully [it will] help the kids get over the pneumonia, give them a bit of a rest and get them through to recovery.”
“As a dad it was sobering to see what we have and what they don’t have.
“We’re talking about the global citizens as we come into the G20, I think it’s a fairly empty phrase – what happens in Uganda and what happens in Brisbane is completely different – but if we can do something that’s a good thing.”
Their research group recently began a pilot program using monitoring equipment and large battery packs to power the breathing device.
Professor Maitland said pneumonia was a serious health problem for children under the age of five.
“Malaria used to be the commonest cause of mortality in children under five, whereas now pneumonia is,” she said.
“We also will collect data to allow us to say how much it cost us to save a single life.
“I think that’s what policy makers need to know – I think it will be a fraction of what people are spending on something like vaccination.
“You have to vaccinate many children in the community to save one life.”
Professor Fraser said some of their first patients have already recovered and returned home.