Executive Summary

Hypoxemia increases the risk of death sevenfold, affecting over one in six hospitalized children. Yet in lower-income countries, 80% of hypoxemic patients go untreated due to limited oxygen access, causing over one million preventable deaths annually.

CHAI’s MOXI Project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the ELMA Foundation, is expanding oxygen access across nine countries, reducing mortality among women, newborns, and children. By strengthening oxygen system planning, clinical administration, procurement, data monitoring, and sustainable financing, MOXI is driving long-term solutions.

Since 2015, CHAI has identified critical oxygen gaps and implemented impactful solutions. Through this project, in Kenya, our teams rolled out national newborn care training, integrating oxygen systems, while Uganda increased pulse oximetry coverage for children under five from 0% to 22%, treating 547 hypoxemic patients. Additionally, a five-year national oxygen strategy was launched in Rwanda, and 726 Master Trainers were trained on oxygen in India reaching 5,000 healthcare workers.

By supporting governments to launch comprehensive National Oxygen Strategies and create oxygen-specific technical working groups, which facilitate the integration of oxygen in national health data systems and national curriculums across disease areas, CHAI is helping ensure sustainable, country-led solutions.

But more funding for this critical work is needed. With $60 million, we can expand this work to 15 more countries, ensuring that no child dies due to a lack of medical oxygen.

Organizations may provide budget and employee data based on this proposal or the organization as a whole. For more information on this proposal or organization, please email us.

2023 Swift Grant Awardee

Together with the Special Olympics, Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) will host a session on disability inclusion at the 2023 World Health Summit with participants with disabilities from the Global South. The session aims to mobilize global health actors to improve health outcomes for roughly 1.3 billion people with disabilities worldwide.

COVID-19 Response

CHAI is marshaling its expertise in oxygen delivery systems to help global and national COVID-19 response efforts rapidly expand access to critical respiratory care services—including oxygen therapy. CHAI is supporting global efforts, led by the World Health Organization, to source oxygen therapy equipment for low-income countries and is working directly with partner governments on national supply planning, rapid health facility capacity assessments, equipment allocation, and health-worker training. Potential changes to the initial proposal in response to the pandemic include: 1) supporting response planning and post-response implementation to ensure COVID-19 investments lead to durable improvements in respiratory care capacity and 2) expanding the program’s scope to help additional countries leverage pandemic response funding to expand access to oxygen. New risks related to the pandemic include: 1) increased strain on health systems—and potential health-worker shortages, 2) a large, short-term increase in donor funding for equipment procurement without planning for maintenance and operational expenses, and 3) potential political and economic instability.

Racial and Ethnic Injustice Response

CHAI’s mission—to ensure that everyone, no matter where they live or the circumstances of their birth, has access to quality, affordable health services—is guided by our commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion. We pursue this mission in over 35 countries and our staff, drawn from the communities we serve, strive to improve outcomes for the most vulnerable patients by tackling seemingly intractable, neglected global health problems. Oxygen has been taken for granted in high-income countries for decades and its continued inaccessibility in low-income countries helps perpetuate longstanding disparities in health outcomes between many African, Asian, and Latin American countries and their European and North American peers. By closing the oxygen access gap, we will take one more step toward a world where all people have the opportunity to reach their full potential.