Dr Mohammod Jobayer Chisti, who works as a doctor in Bangladesh, has come up with a way to save children’s lives when they suffer from pneumonia.
His work has been highlighted by The BBC, as part of their Innovators series. He told them that he wanted to change the way hospitals in developing countries operate and treat patients with pneumonia, in particular children.
Usually, an expensive machine is needed to treat the illness which affects the lungs. As the lungs fill with fluid, less oxygen is taken in. These machines work as ventilators to help people to breath properly. But, they cost upwards of €12,500 and need a fully trained professional to operate them.
Most of the hospitals in developing countries cannot afford this machine and, as a result, 920,000 babies die each year, mostly in South Asian and Sub-Saharan African countries.
Dr Chisti came up with a way to create a tool that works similarly to some of the machines but doesn’t cost as much. It involved using an empty shampoo bottle. His aim was to help the lungs to keep working and take in as much oxygen as possible.
He took the shampoo bottle, filled it with water and places a plastic tube in one end. The tube leading into the water was used to help children exhale, and when they did it created bubbles. The lungs were therefore kept open by the pressure of the bubbles.
He explained how it works:
“The children inhale oxygen from a tank and exhale through a tube which is inserted into a bottle of water producing bubbles in the water.
We tested it on four or five patients at random. We saw a significant improvement within a few hours.”
The device that he created, known as the bubble CPAP, costs just over €1, but it appears to have cut mortality rates by 75%.
So far, it has saved over 600 babies.
