On Mahamad Chisti’s first night as a trainee pediatrician in Bangladesh, he watched in horror as three children died of pneumonia. Oxygen was being delivered to them through small tubes in their nostrils, called a low-flow technique. Obviously, it failed, and he thought there HAD to be a better way.
So he devised a type of ventilator called the bubble CPAP to keep oxygen levels up in infants. How it works and what exactly it does is fairly scientific, but it has worked to save infant lives. AND it is much cheaper than similar ventilators sold in the medical world.
Supplies for one of these devices costs about $1.25. Quite a difference over the $15,000 ventilators being sold to hospitals.
Hospitals there now use the device routinely, and infant deaths have dropped by three-quarters, which is tremendous.
Maybe it’s time to try these devices EVERYWHERE in the world.
