It is a very essential component in our lives gifted to us by nature for free, yet we get to know its real value when on a hospital bed and in a dire need to be assisted to breath. In this case, a patient, now bedridden, will require an oxygen concentrator which is responsible for taking in air; removing nitrogen from it leaving an oxygen enriched gas for use by people requiring medical oxygen due to low oxygen levels in their blood.

Being in 21st century with advancements in technology, one would expect this to be readily available in hospitals and to be cost-effective as well. Wrong! A patient requiring this support would be billed either hourly or daily depending on the hospital, but it is not a guarantee to find this kind of equipment in every facility. According to Attiyah Warris; Professor of Fiscal Law & policy at the University of Nairobi, a single oxygen concentrator would cost approximately Ksh 200,000 hence its unavailability in most health institutions due to cost implications.

It is this challenge that the faculty at the University of Nairobi identified and has since become the first learning institution in East and Central Africa to design a low- cost oxygen concentrator, which if successful, will retail at ten times less compared to the ones that are already in the market. Apart from being pocket friendly, the oxygen concentrator is to be used in low resource settings as found in most African countries. The research team is led by Prof. Madara Ogot,Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, Innovation and Enterprise,and a faculty member of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, working with Dr. Richard Ayah, Director of the Science and Technology Park and a faculty member of the School of Public Health.  

Students from Mechanical and Electrical engineering at the faculty also played an integral role from its inception as they were charged with responsibilities in design, prototyping and assembling of the product. Bildad Muchemi, a fifth year mechanical engineering student could only measure this as an industrial attachment due to the exposure he has received from the project which cannot be compared to a usual class session.

The school has so far designed 2 prototypes with the latter being more successful in both design and functionality though they continue to modify it based on the feedback they regularly receive from stakeholders involved through workshops. However, the prototype is currently under review by Kenya Bureau of Standards. When successful, the faculty will then distribute 10 concentrators across different hospitals for use before scaling to a wide scale production.