Powering Health

Home »

The Challenge

A combination of poor energy system design and installation, lack of operation and maintenance funds, and limited training of local users and technicians has resulted in inoperable distributed energy systems in a significant number of health facilities in developing countries.

The provision of energy services to developing country health facilities is complicated by several factors:

Poor Planning and Donor Coordination

Often the health sector support programs providing medical equipment and other electrical loads and the energy sector support programs providing energy services to health facilities do not communicate effectively leading to systems failure.

Requirement for Continuous, High Quality Power

From the engineering standpoint, the energy requirements of health facilities are often more demanding than other public facilities and residences. The continuous and high quality electricity required to run medical equipment and power the cold chain often requires on-site technologies operated by trained users.

Insufficient Human Capacity and Institutional Support Structures

Health sector institutions, from the Ministry of Health (MOH) to the clinic, are typically not well staffed to deal with infrastructure issues.

Lack of Financial Resources and Revenue Stream

Public health facilities in developing countries typically do not have a sufficient revenue flow required to purchase, maintain and operate energy systems.

Weak Local Energy Sectors/Service Providers

Health facilities which receive poor quality power from the grid or other service providers are faced with the challenge of improving the quality and reliability of that power on-site. Improving the operations of service providers in developing countries is a critical step to improve the energy services at critical health facilities.

Antiquated Physical Infrastructure

Many health facilities in developing countries have antiquated internal electrical distribution systems and building wiring. As new loads have been added to the facilities the wiring has not been updated causing safety hazards and operational challenges.