Uganda’s baby incubator wins global recognition

Mr Christopher Nsamba, a Ugandan developer of a sophisticated baby incubator, has won a global award for his significant contribution in saving babies born prematurely.

The award was given to him by a European-based NGO, Official World Record, which was founded in 2010 to promote, verify, catalog and register world records.

Mr Nsamba, the director at African Space Research Programme, told Daily Monitor  yesterday that conventional incubators carry only one baby, but his can carry up to 10 babies.

He added that the incubator is installed at Kawempe National Referral Hospital.

Dr Diana Atwine, the Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary, congratulated Mr Nsamba for the milestone, saying it has positioned Uganda as a country with some of the greatest inventions in healthcare.  

“Mr Nsamba has been consistent in all he does to contribute to humanity. The incubators he built have been recognised world over. He needs to be supported to do more,” she tweeted.

A total of 226,000 babies are born prematurely in Uganda annually, according to the Ministry of Health. 

Of these, as high as 31.6 per cent of preterm babies admitted to hospitals die, another study by scientist Ivan Egesa Wafula indicates.

Mr Nsamba said Uganda beat 194 countries to emerge the best.

“We built the most advanced baby incubator in the world. They evaluate and ask those countries if they have something better than that [our incubator] and if they don’t have, then you score a win against them,”  Me Nsamba said.

“This incubator monitors the baby, it cleanses the air around the baby to safeguard them from airborne diseases. The equipment is so sophisticated. It can run remote diagnosis and we can control it over Internet. It has more than 132 features,” he added.

The manufacturer said they started developing the incubator from November 2018.

He said his plan to build baby incubators started in 2015 when he came up with one being used in another hospital.

“We already had another one we built and it is in Mukono Hospital. It has saved more than 6,000 babies. It was deployed in 2017. We built it in 2015. So that was our first, but it wasn’t the biggest. It only had two units and still it was more advanced than the usual incubators,”  Mr Nsamba said.

Dr Geoffrey Kasirye, the officer-in-charge of Mukono Hospital, confirmed this to this newspaper earlier that they have the incubator. 

He said out of 700 babies born every month at the facility, 25 are born premature and need an incubator.

Premature birth is caused by poor nutrition before and during pregnancy, smoking, using illegal drugs, or drinking too much alcohol during pregnancy, certain infections and an abnormal uterus among others, according to available scientific information.  

Mr Nsamba said his innovations are more to do with saving lives. 

“We wanted to add more chances for these neonates to survive. Along the way, God awarded us something big,” he said.

Mr Nsamba said it took a lot of endurance to come up with the innovation given the limited support from the government and accuracy required in building the incubator.

“The equipment is made here. That is why it got the Official World Record. It is non-exist anywhere. We sat down and manufactured all its components locally,” he said.

“We are currently building world’s [biggest baby incubator] number 2. We started building in January [this year] and we expect to complete it might be ready by end of this month. We are doing our best,” he added.

Another baby incubator in offing

Mr Christopher Nsamba said he is getting support from the Ministry of Health to manufacture another baby incubator that will be installed in the ministry’s hospital of choice.  He said the ministry started supporting him immediately after installing the smaller incubator at Mukono Hospital.

The incubators are still being manufactured in a small workshop in Ntinda, Kampala, due to limited funds to establish a mega facility, according to Mr Nsamba. 

He didn’t reveal the amount of money he would sell the incubator if a health facility wished to buy it.  Information from Albaba.com indicates that a baby incubator with unit for one baby costs $1,300, which is about Shs5.4 million.