Why Children Are Dying When We Know How to Save Them
In Northern Nigeria, a child is admitted to hospital with pneumonia every 3 minutes. Without oxygen, 1 in 5 will die. Most deaths are preventable—if hospitals can detect low oxygen levels and deliver treatment.
How We Started
The Problem Was Solvable
In 2024, Leonie Falk visited hospitals across Gombe State and saw the same pattern: pediatric wards filled with children struggling to breathe, but no systematic way to detect which ones had dangerously low oxygen levels. Pulse oximeters sat broken in storage. Oxygen concentrators, when present, often didn't work because no one had been trained to maintain them.
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The tragedy wasn't scarcity—it was dysfunction. Most hospitals had received oxygen equipment through various programs over the years. But without protocols for actually using the equipment, training healthcare workers to recognize hypoxemia, and systems for maintenance, children kept dying.
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Leonie recognized that the solution wasn't complex: equip facilities with working pulse oximeters, train nurses to use them systematically, and ensure oxygen delivery systems actually functioned. Then measure everything to prove it worked.
It wasn't about money or technology. It was about systems—training nurses to check oxygen levels and ensuring equipment actually worked." — Leonie Falk, Founder